Oral Answers to Questions

DEFENCE

The Secretary of State was asked—

Missile Defence System

Robert Goodwill: What recent assessment he has made of the case for a missile defence system for the UK.

Des Browne: Before I turn to the answer to the hon. Gentleman's question, I am sure that the whole House will join me in offering my condolences to the family and friends of Marine Jonathan Holland, of 45 Commando, who died in Afghanistan last week. His loss is a further reminder of the bravery and commitment of all our personnel, military and civilian, who serve in dangerous places and do such amazing work.
	We continue to examine the potential options for future UK participation in a missile defence system. The NATO summit at Riga last November tasked continued work on the political and military implications of missile defence for the alliance. The work is now under way and the UK remains closely involved in it.

Robert Goodwill: Many of my constituents work at RAF Fylingdales, which has played a vital role in the defence of our nation, particularly during the cold war. What role does the Secretary of State see RAF Fylingdales playing in the future defence of our country?

Des Browne: I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that our view is that RAF Fylingdales, which, as he says, has played such an important role thus far in the defence of our country, will continue to play a very important role. The UK already makes a contribution to the US missile defence system through the early warning radar at RAF Fylingdales, and through well-established technical co-operation programmes, which include the work of Fylingdales. I do not see that that is likely to come to an end in the near future.

Nick Harvey: I endorse the words of the Secretary of State in expressing his condolences. What contact has the Prime Minister had with the American President about this missile defence system, and does the Secretary of State recognise that reports suggest that the Americans have already spent $90 billion on research? Does he believe that the system actually works, or is there some risk that people might develop a false sense of security if we have it in the UK? What impact does he think that it might have on our relations with Russia and China? More broadly, is there any sense that this might make us a target, and does he think that it will have any impact on—

Mr. Speaker: Order. That is already four questions.

Des Browne: I shall endeavour, Mr. Speaker, to give the hon. Gentleman a short answer to his questions. I do not know what he means by asking whether the system "actually works", and I am not in a position to give the House an assessment of whether the proposed United States system will work, but my understanding is that it is at the developmental stage. As far as Russia and other states that have developed responsible attitudes to missile defence are concerned, the system, as I understand it, is not intended to defend against them, but to address limited threats from states that seek to acquire, and threaten the use of, ballistic missiles. Frankly, talk of being targeted as a consequence of the development of such a system is entirely uncalled for. According to the way in which the system has been explained to me, it does not pose a threat to anyone.

Philip Dunne: Why has the Secretary of State chosen to reveal the fact that such discussions were going on with the United States only following an article in  The Economist last week, given that Members of this House have been asking questions about the subject for more than 18 months? Why does he not want to engender cross-party consensus on this issue by being prepared to discuss it with my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State?

Des Browne: In the time that I have been the Secretary of State I have answered questions on this issue, as the hon. Gentleman will see if he checks the records of this House. Indeed, I have a number of such questions in my brief, and if I could find them I would quote them to him; however, he can check them for himself in the record. I have made it clear, as did my predecessor and his predecessor, that we continue to be involved in discussions with our NATO allies, including the United States of America, on ballistic missile defence. Nothing in what has been revealed is inconsistent with what I have said in the past, and I have checked to make sure that that is the case. No decisions have been taken, no matter what may have been suggested, but frankly, it would be irresponsible of the Government not to explore with the United States and our other NATO allies the implications that the system might offer for the security of the United Kingdom. That is what we are doing and will continue to do, and the House will be informed, as I said in July, of any change to the current position.

Liam Fox: May I begin by associating myself with the Secretary of State's comments about Jonathan Holland? The thoughts and prayers of the whole House will be with his family and friends.
	May I just jog the Secretary of State's memory a little? On 1 November last year, in response to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth) asking him what discussions he had had with the United States Government about the provision of a ballistic missile defence system site in the United Kingdom, he gave the answer:
	"It is not the practice of the Government to make public details of discussions with foreign Governments as this would, or would be likely to prejudice international relations."—[ Official Report, 1 November 2006; Vol. 451, c. 431W.]
	Far from there being frankness on the issue, we would not even have known that discussions were taking place had it not been for  The Economist. Now that we have had confirmation from Downing street that such talks are taking place, can the Secretary of State tell us exactly what the status of the talks is, what the future plans for talks are, what we may have been committed to in terms of planning or development, and what the time scales for decisions will be?

Des Browne: The hon. Gentleman's researches on the questions that I have answered are incomplete. On 29 June, in response to questions posed by a Liberal Member, I told the House:
	"Officials work closely with the United States on joint technology programmes and to further our understanding of the US ballistic missile defence system. Their discussions include the modelling of possible missile defence architectures. However, we have had no discussions about the use of specific sites for interceptors in the United Kingdom."—[ Official Report, 29 June 2006; Vol. 448, c. 533W.]
	If the hon. Gentleman cares to research fully the questions that I and others have answered, he will see that our position is consistent with the position that Governments before our Government have occupied, which is that we do not talk about discussions between Ministers, for the obvious reasons that I have given in answer to the question that he asked. Perhaps if he had asked another question, he might have been given the answer that Liberal Members were given, but in any event his researches should have revealed it.
	We have not moved from the position that I have consistently explained to the House. No decisions have been taken, and no amount of presenting what has been going on and has appropriately been reported to the House will alter that fact. We are not at the decision-making stage. The United States has announced the beginning of negotiations with Poland and the Czech Republic, and it would be irresponsible of our Government not to explore with the US and NATO the implications that the system might offer for the defence of the United Kingdom. That is all we have been doing.

Liam Fox: It is clear that the answers from the Secretary of State's Department are, at the very least, inconsistent. Opposition Members—those on the Conservative Benches, in particular—would welcome any discussions that we had with the United States about such a system, or, indeed, any system that might increase the security of the United Kingdom. Can the Secretary of State tell us when he feels that he will be able to give the House an assessment of the technical capabilities of such a system as it develops—and with both Iran and Russia among the large number of countries that are increasing their ballistic missile spending, does he not believe that it would be prudent for us to be involved in such talks? Also on that issue, who does he believe is likely to be the main threat in the years ahead?

Des Browne: The hon. Gentleman will be aware that NATO carried out a feasibility study, which was commissioned in Prague in 2002. Although the detail of that study is classified, it is perfectly clear that it has come to the conclusion that although at the moment there is not a coincidence of capability and intent, there is, in the view of the Government, a strong possibility of that developing in the years to come. The hon. Gentleman identifies Iran as one of the countries that may be developing such a capability, and of course we saw the developments over the weekend. I agree with his assessment that it would be entirely appropriate for the UK Government, commensurate with our responsibility for the defence of the United Kingdom, to keep abreast of discussions and developments in relation to that potentially very important capability, which is exactly what we have been doing.

Iraq

Edward Leigh: If he will make a statement on the security situation in Iraq.

Des Browne: The security situation in some parts of Iraq, especially Baghdad, remains serious, mainly as a result of inter-communal violence and indiscriminate attacks by terrorist and militant groups. A new Iraqi-US security plan for Baghdad, Fard al-Qanoon, which translates as Operation Enforce the Law, and which is aimed at improving the security situation there, commenced on 14 February. Elsewhere in Iraq the security situation is better, particularly in the north and south of the country. That is why last week my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was able to announce our plans to reposture UK forces in Basra and draw down some 1,600 troops.

Edward Leigh: The Secretary of State will recall the many warnings given at the time of the invasion about the difficulties facing western powers in imposing a security solution on an Arab nation. Looking forward, can he give a candid assessment of the quality and integrity of the Iraqi security forces, particularly those in the south of the country, and appraise the House of the detailed conditions that will have to be met before there can be a major withdrawal of British troops?

Des Browne: The hon. Gentleman identifies exactly what will be the measure of our ability to withdraw from Iraq—the ability of the Iraqi forces and their Government to deliver security for the people of Iraq. He asks me for a candid assessment of the ability of the security forces, particularly those in the south, and he will be aware that we are working there with the 10th division of the Iraqi army. Those who assess the capabilities of those forces advise me that, bearing in mind the fact that they have been in existence for less than four years, they have made significant progress and have reached the stage at which they can take the lead in relation to delivering security for their people. That is why in Operation Sinbad they were able to take the lead and carry out the later phases of the operation. In my view, the Iraqi police force is further behind in its development. There are still significant difficulties in terms of militia infiltration of the force, but one of the advantages of Operation Sinbad was that it even led to an improvement in the Iraqi police.

Linda Gilroy: Can my right hon. Friend tell me whether there has been any movement in relation to the release of detainees by the Iraqi Government? Does he agree that that is important to achieving buy-in by all sectors of the Government to achieving security?

Des Browne: My hon. Friend identifies a significant challenge for the Iraqi Government in the future. Many thousands of people are at present detained and the Iraqi Government, as they take over responsibility, will have to face the challenge of processing those people though their justice system and ensuring that there is not a long residue of discontent among a substantial part of the population when the Government take more control. As a matter of fact, I understand that many thousands of detainees have been released recently, but it is anticipated that as a consequence of the current operation in Baghdad, others may be detained to fill those spaces. The challenge remains, and the Iraqi Government's ability to deal with it will be more a function of their ability to stand up a justice system and to stand up security forces.

Ann Winterton: Is not the case that the military have almost lost the ability to fight an insurgency war, and are certainly inadequately equipped to do so? This, coupled with the present rules of engagement, makes it well nigh impossible to make progress in this theatre, and that is not good for the security situation as a whole.

Des Browne: I do not agree with the hon. Lady. Our troops are simply not ill-equipped. We have introduced a range of new systems over the past few years that have enhanced our troops' capability quite significantly—for example, new body armour, underslung grenade launchers, night vision equipment, light machine guns, ballistic eye protection and a range of other offensive and defensive systems, not to mention the progress that we have made in past months in relation to protected vehicles.
	Equally, I do not accept that our military are not capable of undertaking counter-insurgency work. Indeed, the contrary is the case. In my view, the British military are the best in the world at undertaking counter-insurgency. That is why General Petraeus, who is in charge of the coalition forces in Iraq, has drawn substantially on our counter-insurgency strategic approach to inform the way in which the American military will now operate. The evidence of that is the improvement that our troops have made in the south-east of Iraq, and we should not underestimate the achievement for which they have been responsible. It has allowed us to announce the draw-down last week.

Chris Bryant: Four weeks ago, four hon. Members were in Basra with British troops as part of the armed forces parliamentary scheme. We saw the tented accommodation at the Shatt al-Arab hotel, which British forces were in until Christmas. It has been heavily bombed, and that is where several British troops have died. We also saw the new accommodation that the troops are now in, in the more secure circumstances inside the Shatt al-Arab hotel, but they will now all be withdrawn from the hotel to the British air base. Does the Secretary of State worry that British troops will now effectively be a sitting target for insurgents? What is to be done to ensure that we have better ISTAR—intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance—support and that we have more secure accommodation, not just tented accommodation, for British troops?

Des Browne: All the issues that my hon. Friend identifies are being actively pursued as we speak. The military advice that I have received is that, as we concentrate our forces back into the Basra air stations, it will easier, and we will be better placed, to defend our troops. There are a number of reasons why that is the case. I do not want to go into them in detail. I am constantly torn when it comes to giving details in the House of the steps that we take to protect our troops, because I do not want to undermine their security. I make my hon. Friend the same offer as I have made to other hon. Members: if he wants a private briefing in relation to this matter, I would be happy to give it to him. I am not prepared to discuss in public the steps that we are taking, but he can rest assured that all the observations that he makes I have made myself on my visits. My top priority for our troops is their safety. Daily, I am involved with the chiefs of staff and others to make sure that we are doing everything that we can to enhance the troops' protection.

Derek Conway: I am aware of the Secretary of State's understandable reluctance in relation to how much he can tell the House, but perhaps he can tell us what is happening about the deployment of safer vehicles for patrol purposes for our forces in Iraq. Clearly, the Iraqi security forces have a long way to go. That leaves our personnel exposed. The Secretary of State assured the House that that problem would be solved, but everybody seems to say that it is not being solved. Who is telling the truth?

Des Browne: I do not know who "everybody" is. Over the last three or four days, in anticipation of coming to the Dispatch Box, I spoke to General Shaw, who is in command of our troops. I always ask about the deployment of these vehicles, and I am assured that they are being deployed. Again, there is a reluctance on my part—I am sure that the House appreciates this—to go into exact numbers, but we are on course to meet the deployment of the protected vehicles that I announced to the House. We set an enormously challenging target for the procurement of those vehicles. Many people said at the outset that we would never meet that target. I am not prepared to argue with the House about a day here or there, but broadly, we are meeting the target and are on course to deliver within the time scale that I announced to the House.

Liam Fox: The Government promised to keep the House informed about Iranian involvement in Iraq. Given that British soldiers have now almost certainly been killed by roadside bombs made in Iran and used by insurgents trained in Iran, will the Secretary of State give us an update on his assessment of Iranian involvement and the risk produced for British troops?

Des Browne: My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister dealt with this issue in response to questions when he made his statement to the House last Wednesday. I am happy to associate myself with everything that the Prime Minister said about it. There is evidence to suggest that there are weapons, and support for militia and those who are attacking our troops in Multi-National Division (South-East), that originate in Iran. There is evidence to suggest that the Quds force has been involved in that. As far as I am aware, there is not evidence that goes any further than that, but of course we are conscious of that situation and configure our response to it in such as way as to address those networks, both at the border and elsewhere in the south-east, and to counter that challenge.

Afghanistan

Brian Jenkins: What progress has been made in improving basic services in Helmand province.

Des Browne: The UK-led provincial reconstruction team in Helmand, assisted by 28 Regiment Royal Engineers, has started to implement more than 100 quick impact projects, which are aimed at improving the lives of ordinary Afghans. Those projects include providing a generator in a hospital in the capital, Lashkar Gah; repairs to schools and the construction of classrooms; a new midwifery hospital; the reinforcement of river banks and flood defences; the refurbishment of tractors and ploughs to encourage legitimate agriculture; and emergency food distribution. Under a programme funded by the Department for International Development, for example, wells are being dug that will provide clean water for 120,000 people.

Brian Jenkins: My right hon. Friend will know that I would usually follow that up rather vigorously by talking about the need for security and a security shield, and the reasons why the security shield might be creaking at present. However, given the statement that I expect later, may I ask him, quite seriously, which of those projects he considers to be the most important—the greatest—in promoting to people in our country and the rest of Europe the reason why NATO is there?

Des Browne: I look forward to my hon. Friend's question in the context of the statement, if he catches your eye, Mr. Speaker. Of the projects that are planned for, or taking place in, Helmand, undoubtedly the most important is the development of the Kajaki dam. There is no question but that that reconstruction work, when completed, will make a significant and life-changing difference to more than 1.8 million people in Helmand province and throughout the south of Afghanistan. The reason for that is that the development will not only generate electricity for people and communities who have never had it before, but add substantially to the agricultural potential of the Helmand river valley by doubling the area that can be tilled.

James Arbuthnot: Does the Secretary of State agree that basic services in Helmand could be improved more if our European NATO allies were doing rather more? Does he agree that they would be better able to fulfil their commitments in Helmand and Afghanistan if they were to raise their spending on defence—and would he like to take this opportunity to invite them to do so?

Des Browne: As may become apparent later, I regularly seek opportunities to discuss with our NATO allies our collective ability to do more, and their contribution to that. However, the right hon. Gentleman is undoubtedly correct to say that if we were able to do more as an alliance, especially in the south and east of Afghanistan, we would have more effect.

Tom Watson: One of the key indicators of success for our reconstruction effort in Afghanistan will be the number of peasant farmers whom we can unshackle from their dependency on the narcotics economy. However, does my right hon. Friend agree that if there is a large-scale increase in poppy eradication in the short term, we might drive those peasant farmers into the hands of the drug warlords and extremists whom we are in Helmand to remove them from?

Des Browne: My hon. Friend is correct, in that we have to get the right balance between eradication, as an aspect of counter-narcotics, and force security. In my view, as I have already said to the House, there is no point in seeing that aspect of counter-narcotics outwith the other more complex aspects of the counter-narcotics regime. The answer to this will be our ability to improve the governance of the province, the engagement of that governance with the farming community and its people, and the ability of the local government to offer people alternative livelihoods that can support them through the transition from poppy. The process is complex.
	However, there is undoubtedly a connection between narcotics and those who wish to attack our forces and to prevent development in the region. That is the case for very obvious reasons: those people take advantage of the chaos that has been there hitherto. The fact of the matter is that there was an increase in poppy cultivation last year in Helmand, where we have significant responsibilities. That was disappointing, but the early signs are that the Afghan eradication force is making some progress this year. However, we should be neither over-optimistic nor over-pessimistic about that. Our ability to deal with the problem will be seen over a longer term than most people would wish, and it will also be a function of our ability to improve governance.

Julian Lewis: May I urge the Secretary of State to take a little more notice of what the hon. Member for West Bromwich, East (Mr. Watson) just said? The hon. Gentleman was, like the Secretary of State, a Defence Minister—but sadly, for all too short a time—and he shares the views of senior military commanders, who believe that suppressing the poppy trade is counter-productive at this stage, in terms of counter-insurgency doctrine. Does the Secretary of State not realise that Taliban commanders are reported as saying that the reason why they support the poppy farmers is that it will make it impossible for NATO to defeat them if they have that support, going both ways? Will he do everything that he can to urge a reversal of the counter-productive strategy of poppy eradication?

Des Browne: Let me say to the hon. Gentleman, and the House, that I do not think I can be accused of not understanding the subtlety of his point, which is on an issue that we have discussed in the House on a number of occasions. The fact is that the picture varies between and within provinces in Afghanistan. In some areas, where there is access to governance, security and development, reductions have been achieved and sustained, and in some cases, the ambition this year is to reduce poppy production to nil. Whether that is achieved or not, it is at least an appropriate target. I have said repeatedly that counter-narcotics needs to be seen in the context of security and the economic challenges facing Afghanistan, and that is exactly what the hon. Gentleman says. We are currently helping the Afghan Government with a number of their shorter-term counter-narcotics activities, but ultimately we can do that only where the environment is secure, and where it leads to a strong, legal economy. That is what will break the hold that narcotics have over the people of Afghanistan. With respect to the hon. Gentleman, I do not need any lessons from him on the challenges and issues in relation to security that that work involves. Indeed, at the beginning of the answer that I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich, East (Mr. Watson), I made that perfectly clear.

Jim Cunningham: Following on from the question that the right hon. Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot) asked, does my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State have any further plans for discussions with NATO countries regarding additional troops for Afghanistan, bearing in mind the idea that according to press reports over the weekend, the troop reduction in Iraq could mean further British troops being sent to Afghanistan?

Des Browne: I am aware of the speculation that there has been about force levels, not just in the theatre that we are discussing but in others. Later this afternoon I will make a statement to the House, and rather than hon. Members making guesses, I suggest that such questions would be better dealt with after I have informed the House of the decision that the Government have made on deployment in Afghanistan.

Iraq

Bob Spink: In what operations in Iraqi Kurdistan British troops are involved; and if he will make a statement.

Des Browne: British troops are not involved in operations in the northern area of Iraq governed by the Kurdistan Regional Government. The UK has lead responsibility for Multi-National Division (South-East), while other members of the multinational forces have responsibility for other areas of Iraq.

Bob Spink: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that response; he is having a very busy afternoon. He knows, of course, that the Kurdish sector of Iraq—the other Iraq, as it is known—is making excellent progress economically, socially and politically. Does he agree that we need to ensure that the Kirkuk referendum, which must take place some time this year—probably in November or December—takes place without any interference or distraction from insurgents or bordering countries, and will he do all in his power to ensure that the referendum proceeds securely?

Des Browne: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for reminding the House of the progress that has been made in northern Iraq. Sometimes one could be forgiven for thinking that it did not exist, but many millions of people live there. It has made quite good progress, not just since action was taken in Iraq by our forces in coalition with others, but prior to that, because of the protection that we granted people from the actions that Saddam Hussein had perpetrated in the area. The hon. Gentleman is perfectly correct to identify the importance of the referendum in Kirkuk, but it should be seen as one of a number of agreements that were made in the political context of the settlement that brought the national unity Government to power in Iraq. That is not to underestimate in any way the challenges that they face. All the elements of that deal need to be taken forward politically, with the support of other countries in the region, and it should not be allowed to be undermined by insurgency. The hon. Gentleman urges the Government, and me, to do everything that we can to support that deal, and he can rest assured that we do that daily.

Tobias Ellwood: The Kurdish areas are one of the success stories in Iraq, but does the Minister accept that in other areas we have reached a tipping point between the Sunnis and Shi'a? It is time to look at the blueprint for Iraq and consider a three-state nation, perhaps based on the United Arab Emirates.

Des Browne: In my view, and much more importantly, in the view of the Iraqi people and their Government, the break-up of Iraq is not in their best interests. The constitutional arrangement allows for federalism, if that is what the hon. Gentleman is referring to, in some circumstances, but the Iraqis need to work through that matter. As I told his hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh), that is what politics is all about in Iraq. We need to support the people of Iraq and their Government in the menu of political challenges that they have set themselves, and not undermine their ability to see that through to the end.

Douglas Hogg: Last week, the Prime Minister announced the beginning of the withdrawal of British troops, but does the right hon. Gentleman agree that when those troops are withdrawn it is extremely important that they are not exposed to unnecessary risk? Will he give the House an assurance that during the process of withdrawal proper steps will be taken to ensure the self-defence capacity of British troops?

Des Browne: I can give the right hon. and learned Gentleman that assurance. That is exactly what we plan to do, even in terms of the limited withdrawal that the Prime Minister announced on Wednesday. At the heart of that announcement, as my right hon. Friend explained to the House, is our ability to draw down our troops in Iraq, because the view was taken not just by us but by our coalition partners and the Iraqi Government themselves that their forces could take the lead in delivering security in areas from which we were drawing down. That process will be continually assessed and reassessed, and unless we can satisfy ourselves as we go along that we can meet the demanding standards that we set, we will not proceed with it. It is a conditions-based process, and one of those conditions is that we look after the security of our own troops there while we undertake it.

Service Personnel (Dentistry)

Stewart Jackson: What recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of access to NHS dental treatment for service personnel and their families.

Derek Twigg: Dental treatment for service personnel is provided free of charge by Defence Medical Services in the UK, at overseas garrisons and on deployed operations, including ships at sea. The families of service personnel who accompany them when serving abroad also receive treatment from Defence Dental Services dentists. Dental care for service families in the UK is the responsibility of the NHS. We acknowledge that some service families have encountered problems due to frequent relocation, but we are working closely with the Department of Health to monitor the situation, and it has informed us that it has taken a number of initiatives to improve access to dental care.

Stewart Jackson: Does the Minister agree that service personnel deserve access to the very best public services? At present, they are not equipped, armed or housed properly, so is not the lack of access to dental care another example of the Government's neglect of service personnel and their families?

Derek Twigg: It is a bit rich of the hon. Gentleman to talk about the funding of public services, given that in his party's plans for public services there are no guarantees of what will be funded. I accept that the provision of dental services for some service personnel has been a problem, which is why, as I said, we are looking at that and working with the NHS to introduce a number of initiatives to improve access to universal care. May I also say that on my recent visit to Iraq and Afghanistan I saw first-class quality dental care being given to our service personnel in theatre? In fact, I had a discussion with someone who was receiving treatment while on operations. That underlines the Government's commitment to ensure that our service personnel receive the best dental treatment and the best health service.

Mark Harper: Recently, I was told about a service family who could not access new dental care because of their rapid mobility around the country, and had to make a round trip of at least 300 miles to visit their previous dentist. The Minister mentioned a number of initiatives taken by the Department of Health, but given that service families are subject to enforced mobility because of circumstances forced on them by the Government, which they accept, what steps will he take to address that issue and make sure that they receive care that is at least as good as that provided for other British citizens?

Derek Twigg: As I just said to the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr. Jackson), our officials have regular discussions with national health service officials to review the initiatives that they are taking. The hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper) will know that initiatives have been taken by Ministers in the Department of Health and reported to the House. For instance, there has been a 25 per cent. increase in the number of dentists since 1997. Following the discussions that we have had with our friends in the Department of Health, we believe that that increase will continue and the service will improve for everybody, including service personnel.

Afghanistan

Philip Hollobone: What recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of numbers of military helicopters in Afghanistan.

Des Browne: There remains a shortfall in the NATO combined joint statement of requirements against the number of helicopters available to commanders. NATO allies made a commitment at the Riga summit to provide the mission with the resources that it needs, and we are working with contributing nations to ensure that those resources are available to commanders. Where the UK is concerned, we assess that our forces have the helicopters that they need to do the task, having deployed two additional Chinooks and having increased flying hours last summer, but we keep this under review.

Philip Hollobone: Will the Secretary of State tell the House how many military helicopters there are in theatre and fit for purpose to support British troops? Is it true that the Ministry of Defence has been forced to seek out commercial helicopter operators to fly non-combat missions, to free up military flying time in support of our front-line troops?

Des Browne: The answer to the first part of the hon. Gentleman's question is that in Afghanistan we operate eight Chinook, eight Apache and five Lynx helicopters, plus others that are assigned for the support of other forces. I am not in a position to answer the hon. Gentleman as to how many of them could fly at this time. If he had given me notice of that question, I could have asked the present commander of those forces, Colonel Ian Huntley, when I was speaking to him today. He confirmed the position in relation to helicopters—indeed, he volunteered that information. Like Brigadier Thomas before him, he confirmed to me that commanders could do more if they had more helicopters, but they have not asked for additional helicopters. I will quote the very words that Col. Huntley used to me:
	"we have enough to do what we need."
	On the other part of the hon. Gentleman's question, although we have no ideological objection to releasing helicopters for tasks that might enable our assets to be freed up for front-line use, we have not sought the sort of support that he suggests from the private sector.

Lindsay Hoyle: I am sure my right hon. Friend is well aware that we ought to have a contingency plan to ensure that when helicopters are needed, we can call upon them. If our NATO partners will not share the weight of the operation in Afghanistan, should they not at least provide helicopters as and when they are required by our front-line troops?

Des Browne: As I said in answer to the original question, there is a shortfall in the NATO combined joint statement of requirements against the number of helicopters. We are working and will continue to work with contributing nations to ensure that those resources are available to commanders. In doing so, we are doing exactly as my hon. Friend suggests and pointing out to some of our allies, where there is the possibility, that they could make helicopters available to us in Afghanistan, equipped so that they could be used for helicopter lift there.

Peter Bone: With regard to what the Minister has just said, in a recent written answer the statement was made:
	"No capability gap has been identified for small light assault helicopters".—[ Official Report, 19 February 2007; Vol. 457, c. 219W.]
	Who identified that there was no capability gap? Was it politicians, the civil service or the armed forces, and on what basis was that judgment made?

Des Browne: A judgment would be made only on the basis of advice from the military and on no other grounds at all. I have no expertise to make such an assessment and I would depend entirely on military commanders to make an assessment for me. I have to say that I agree with the hon. Gentleman—I do not believe that there is a shortage of attack helicopters in Afghanistan. Those Apaches that we deployed, despite the fact that many people said that they were a bad purchase in the first place, have turned out to be much more capable than anybody thought they would be.

Gwyneth Dunwoody: However, is the Secretary of State totally satisfied that the maintenance programme for the Apache is carried out in as efficient, frequent and timely a manner as possible?

Des Browne: If my hon. Friend is aware of any issues that she thinks I might not be aware of, she should bring them to my attention and I will do what I can. I am aware that at stages there have been supply chain issues in relation to spares. Of course, when those issues come to our attention, we make sure that if there is anything we can do from the point of view of the Ministry of Defence to overcome them, we will do it and they will be overcome. However, candidly, because of the difficulty of support for these very complex machines, things sometimes go wrong, and when they do it is our duty to make sure that they are corrected, and that they do not go wrong in the future.

Air Bridge

Mark Lancaster: If he will make a statement on the air bridge between the UK and operational theatres.

Adam Ingram: I accept that we have experienced difficulties with the movement of personnel into and out of operational theatres. This has been due to a number of factors, not least the availability of the RAF fleet. The air bridges are under review and improvements are being made, including use of air charter and improvements to infrastructure and passenger-handling processes.

Mark Lancaster: The tri-service planning process for the delivery of the air bridge is understandably complex. It is effectively a triumvirate of Permanent Joint Headquarters, Defence Supply Chain Operations and Movements and 2 Group RAF, but crucially, no single organisation is in control. Will the Minister consider appointing an appropriately ranked senior officer to be responsible for the delivery of the air bridge in its entirely, and perhaps most importantly, will he ensure that that senior officer is empowered to make the decisions necessary to ensure that it is an effective air bridge?

Adam Ingram: I thank the hon. Gentleman for all of his input into this matter. He has been fierce in raising a range of issues, not least because of his personal experience in returning from Afghanistan, where he served with distinction. I understand also that his argument has been listened to and a new facility is to be opened at Cyprus air base, which will be named Lancaster house. Perhaps peace will break out between us if we can talk at that facility.
	The hon. Gentleman raises a serious and interesting point. There is currently an end-to-end review under way to look at all the different aspects of those who make a contribution to the air bridge. One such issue being considered is his very request for a senior officer to be responsible for the air bridge. First, we have to identify the component parts, where the weaknesses are, how they are to be addressed and who then takes ownership of that process. I am most sympathetic to his point.

James Gray: An absolutely central part of the air bridge, of course, is the C-130 Hercules aircraft based at Lyneham in my constituency. We saw another of them crashing in the past two weeks, thankfully with no serious casualties, although it was eerily reminiscent of the loss of the Hercules in Iraq two years ago, with the loss of 10 airmen. Will the Minister reconfirm to the House his intention to fit foam suppressant into the wing tanks of the Hercules fleet? I know that that has been completed in two or three planes, but will he recommit the Government to fit suppressant as soon as possible in all those planes that are in any area of risk?

Adam Ingram: That is another matter that we are looking at with great urgency. It is not only a question of suppressant foam but an improved defensive aid suite fit across the fleet where that is practicable and required. Clearly, that process takes time: aircraft have to come out of the rota, and they then have to be worked up. We are making very good progress on the Hercules fleet, but I am sure that the hon. Gentleman recognises that, again, this is an operational security issue. I do not think that it is appropriate to talk about absolute numbers, but all the aircraft will have the necessary fit to meet the operational requirements.

Mark Francois: I entirely endorse the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Milton Keynes (Mr. Lancaster) about the need to review the operation of the air bridge. I wrote to the Secretary of State about that, and he kindly wrote back recently. There is considerable anecdotal evidence that there are severe delays in getting troops back to the UK. That is not only affecting the morale of the troops who will have to return to theatre but, in the medium term, having a serious effect on retention. May I urge Ministers to take this seriously and to come up with a solution that is worthy of our troops?

Adam Ingram: The short answer is yes. As I said, we are urgently considering the situation because we understand only too well the impact that it has on our personnel both coming out of theatre and going into theatre. That is why one of the remedies that we have adopted is the purchase of charter aircraft. Some people have criticised us for so doing, but it is part of the solution and it has made a considerable improvement to what we are doing. More needs to be done, and we are on the case. I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's comments.

Patrick Cormack: But do not the very well-informed questions of my colleagues underline the wide public perception that we are giving our armed forces a world role, for which they are well suited, but not giving them the back-up that they richly deserve?

Adam Ingram: That is one of those general questions that members of Her Majesty's armed forces have asked of every Government down the decades, and perhaps even the centuries. The reality is that we are having to deal with legacy issues, which is why we have major procurement programmes across all three services. I suggest that the hon. Gentleman needs to look at what we are doing to upgrade the Royal Navy, which we will debate later, what we are seeking to do through the new future rapid effects system for the Army, and the major and significant investment that we are making in the RAF, not only in fast jets but in other elements of the service. I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's perceptions, and I ask him to share with me the realities.

Missile Defence

John Pugh: How much has been allocated in 2007 for the prevention of missile attacks on the UK.

Des Browne: That is a very broad question, although I suspect that the hon. Gentleman may not have intended it to be so wide. The Government undertake a range of activities to help to prevent missile attacks, ranging from diplomacy and counter-proliferation to counter-terrorism measures and active defences, many of which have wide applications beyond missile attacks. It would therefore be inappropriate to attempt separately to identify a proportion of the costs for this purpose. To be specific, however, the UK Missile Defence Centre was established in 2003 to provide advice on strategic missile defence issues, and its budget for 2007-08 is £5 million.

John Pugh: I thank the Minister for that response, but star wars aside, can he indicate the broad balance of expenditure between purely defensive and retaliatory systems and say how far future expenditure on defensive systems depends on the USA?

Des Browne: The hon. Gentleman's follow-up question is about as broad as his original one. I do not, candidly, have the detail to be able to answer it. I suspect that what underlies it is an attempt to get me to concede or to imply that our defence system will be dependent on what the United States of America does. As I went to some lengths to make clear in response to an earlier question in this House, we in Government assess that any responsible Government would explore with the United States and NATO allies the implications of a ballistic missile defence system and what that might offer the security of the United Kingdom. We have been doing that for some years, and we are assessing it. The system is designed to develop progressively. No decisions have been made as to how we will proceed in this context; when they have, we will inform the House.

Jim Sheridan: My right hon. Friend is right to identify all the agencies that work hard 24/7 every year to protect this country from a possible attack from a missile. However, does he agree that if indeed there was such an attack on the UK, it is highly unlikely that any missile would recognise the borders of the four nations?

Des Browne: My hon. Friend is perfectly correct. My responsibility is to concentrate on the security of the United Kingdom, and that means all the nations that make up the United Kingdom. I intend to ensure that any decisions that we make in future recognise the integrity of that Union, which I look forward to seeing continue and flourish.

Vehicle Identification Markings

Mark Hunter: What assessment he has made of the adequacy of vehicle and military transport markings in conflict zones identifying them as British.

Adam Ingram: The primary concern in a conflict zone is a combat identification system that is interoperable between all coalition partners: British identity is of secondary importance. For all coalition operations, specific combat identification measures are agreed with allies. Vehicle markings are the last layer in a multi-layered approach to recognising friendly forces, but there is no foolproof way to prevent the misidentification of units in a highly complex and stressful battlefield. Every system ultimately relies on human judgment, training and procedures.

Mark Hunter: In the light of events surrounding the death of Lance Corporal Matty Hull in March 2003—video footage clearly showed that American soldiers had fired on the British convoy, despite orange markings on armoured military vehicles to indicate that they were friendly forces—will the Minister explain what measures he plans to take to ensure that our troops are safe not only from insurgents, but from allied forces, and that there is increased co-operation with the US in improving accountability and releasing vital—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I am going to send out a circular about this matter, but reading out a supplementary is not expected of hon. Members. The general election was two years ago and I have given some leeway to new Members, but two years into a Parliament, I do not expect long drawn-out supplementary questions to be read out to the House.

Adam Ingram: I would suggest to the hon. Gentleman that he study the matter in greater detail. I do not want to go into the case to which he referred, which is the subject of a coroner's inquest at the present time—it is better to wait and see what comes out of that inquest. We also have our own board of inquiry processes, so when an incident happens, we try to establish what the ground truth is. We then try to learn the lessons and fix the problem, if it can be fixed. As I said a moment ago, no matter what technical mechanisms are put in place, no matter what training is put in place and no matter how much situational awareness there may be, human error can occur in a stressful battlefield. That applies to our personnel as much as it does to the personnel in other armed forces working alongside us. We are trying to improve all those aspects at all times, so I suggest that the hon. Gentleman study a bit more, before he comes to easy conclusions.

Ian Davidson: While accepting the Minister's point about the organisation and training of our own troops, what guarantee is there that the organisation and training of our allies will be up to a sufficiently high standard? In particular, the incident to which the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mark Hunter) referred indicated a certain gung-ho attitude, which undoubtedly places our troops at risk. Will the Minister make sure that that is dealt with?

Adam Ingram: I do not know what my hon. Friend means when he says "dealt with". We could find ourselves in a set of circumstances in which our personnel perpetrate similar actions in a stressful battlefield. If right hon. and hon. Members think that we can remove the human aspect of the problem, they are simply wrong. What we are trying to do through all the NATO processes—we are working with our NATO allies on this—is improve the technological solutions and get the best fit possible. We are investing heavily in all the new equipment to make it compatible with any new fit that may be developed for the purpose of combat ID. Training is increasingly tri-service within the UK and, of course, we train comprehensively with our allies. One of the aspects of such training is to try to minimise the bit of risk that my hon. Friend has identified.

Equipment (Improvements)

Iain Wright: What improvements have been made since the strategic defence review in personal equipment, protective equipment and light weapons.

Adam Ingram: Since the 1998 strategic defence review, there have been tremendous improvements in each of those areas. To give just a few examples, we have introduced nearly 40 items of new and improved personal clothing; we have developed a range of new body armour for troops on operations, which has transformed the level of protection available to our personnel; and we have provided highly capable light weapons, such as the light machine gun and the grenade machine gun.

Iain Wright: I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer, and I understand that improvements to defence equipment provision and procurement have been made, as highlighted in the Defence Select Committee's report on this matter in November last year. Will my right hon. Friend tell the House how much has been spent on urgent operational requirements in the past few years? Will he reassure me that this spend is now being better married up to what the troops on the ground actually need?

Adam Ingram: That is a very good question. The figure that we are currently quoting is in the region of £500 million, which has been spent both in Iraq and Afghanistan. That amount is increasing regularly as new urgent operational requirements are identified and committed to. Going back to an earlier answer that I gave, we seek to identify what lessons have to be learned about issues that have to be addressed on equipment. We then identify what needs to be done, and get industry committed to delivering it. We are making a sizeable and major delivery, and we have made it clear that, when an urgent operational requirement is needed, it will be met.

Nicholas Winterton: I merely seek reassurance from the Minister. Many of us have received representations relatively recently from service personnel serving in operational theatres telling us that they have had to buy personal equipment to enable them to do their job. Will he give the House an assurance that our military personnel serving abroad and representing this country in critical areas of the world will no longer have to buy personal equipment to enable them to undertake their difficult job in comfort?

Adam Ingram: I can give the hon. Gentleman an almost absolute guarantee on that. The one item with which we have a recurring problem is boots. Because of some of the existing problems, we are, once again, trying to find the answer, although there might not be one. It might just be that the conditions are such that anything that we put in is going to wear and tear very quickly. If we talk to any member of Her Majesty's armed forces who has served on the front line, we find that they do not need to buy equipment, although they might want to do so out of personal choice. The quality and standard of their personal kit is now higher than it has ever been in relation to what we ask of them, and that applies across all three services.

Afghanistan (Force Levels)

Des Browne: On 1 February, I announced the forthcoming rotation of our troops in Afghanistan. At that time, I undertook, once I had spoken with my fellow NATO Defence Ministers at Seville, to update the House on any further changes to our force structure. That is what I am here to do today.
	I want begin by highlighting the progress and achievements in Afghanistan during 2006. NATO has continued its expansion of responsibility for this vital campaign into the more challenging south and east of the country. We have faced down the Taliban in their own back yard, delivering security and bringing the reach of the Afghan Government to places that have hardly seen it before. We have unified the military mission under the leadership of General Richards and the British-led allied rapid reaction corps. Across Afghanistan, we have built schools, mosques, roads, wells and markets. We have defended and reinforced five years of progress, including the first elections in decades, remarkable improvements in education, and the return of 5 million refugees.
	I say this because, before we talk about what more we must do, we should understand what is at risk if we do not continue to live up to the collective commitment we have made to Afghanistan and its people. I am not here to herald this as a job done. I am not painting a glossy picture; our mission in Afghanistan faces serious challenges and the country faces serious problems. But I am here to explain why we must keep working to meet these challenges and to secure Afghanistan's future.
	I have said many times from this Dispatch Box that there is no purely military solution to Afghanistan's problems. What military forces can do, as has been shown right across the country, is increase security. But unless we can help the Afghan Government to bring security to all their people, and convince them that they and NATO are going to defeat the Taliban and others who try to block or destroy progress, everything else that we have achieved in Afghanistan will remain at risk.
	At Seville, NATO's senior military commander— the Supreme Allied Commander Europe—reminded NATO members that it is in the south and east that the security challenge is most acute. He identified a further need for robust, flexible, manoeuvrable combat forces to strengthen NATO commanders' ability to tackle the challenge across those regions.
	We believe that every NATO partner should be prepared to do more to meet that need. At Seville, some announced that they would do so. America promised an additional 3,000 troops. France has offered more close air support. Germany has pledged six reconnaissance Tornadoes. Lithuania has pledged additional troops. All those contributions are welcome. They build on earlier commitments made at Riga in the autumn, principally by Poland, which committed a battalion to the east, but we must be realistic about how many nations have the ability to take on the tasks facing NATO in the south and the east.
	I have lobbied our partners consistently for more help in those regions and I will continue to do so, but it is increasingly clear that at present, when it comes to the most demanding tasks in the more challenging parts of Afghanistan, only we and a small number of key allies are prepared to step forward. That is why we have decided to commit additional forces to Afghanistan. Put simply, the alternative is unacceptable—it would place too great a risk on the progress we have made so far. That is a risk we simply cannot afford to take, for the sake of Afghanistan and of our own security. We may be shouldering a greater share of the burden than we might like, but so are others, and we do so in the knowledge that this is a vital mission and one that is directly in our national interest.
	I turn now to the details of what this decision means in practice. The UK has decided to fill one of SACEUR's most pressing requirements—a manoeuvre battalion for Regional Command (South), which is an area that covers Helmand—the base and responsibility of the existing UK taskforce—but also the strategically vital neighbouring provinces of Kandahar, Oruzgan, Zabul, Nimruz and Daykondi.
	We propose to deploy a battlegroup comprising elements of an infantry battalion, the 1st Battalion, the Royal Welsh, which will be augmented with a company of Warrior infantry fighting vehicles from the 1st Battalion, the Scots Guards. It will include additional artillery, including a regimental HQ and a battery of light guns from the 19th Regiment, Royal Artillery; a brigade surveillance group drawn from the 5th Regiment, Royal Artillery; and a troop of guided multiple launch rocket systems from the 39th Regiment, Royal Artillery.
	We shall also deploy additional reconnaissance and surveillance capabilities, four more Harrier GR9s to provide close air support, four Sea King helicopters from 846 Naval Air Squadron to increase our support helicopter capacity, and another C-130 Hercules. Some of the forces deployed will be reservists, although I am not yet in a position to inform the House of how many. I will write to confirm that.
	In terms of overall numbers, that adds up to nearly 1,400 additional personnel. Some will deploy from the roulement in May, but the majority will deploy over the summer. They will be based mostly in Helmand, with some at Kandahar airfield, although they will provide NATO commanders in RC (South) with a flexible capability for use across the southern region. In total, our forces in Afghanistan will increase from around 6,300 to settle at about 7,700 personnel. The current planning assumption remains that those forces are committed until 2009.
	I am well aware of the pressure that this will continue to put our armed forces under. I have made it clear in the past that this Government fully recognise how much we are asking of them. I want to take this opportunity to say again on behalf of the Government how much we admire the professionalism, skill and bravery with which they do the hard and dangerous work that we ask of them. I repeat that ensuring that they have the support and equipment that they need remains my highest priority, but I also want to make it clear that we would not make this decision to commit extra forces unless it was in accordance with unequivocal military advice. I and the chiefs of staff agree that this additional commitment is manageable.
	Before closing, I want to address some misconceptions about this decision which have circulated over recent days. The first is that our recent decisions on Iraq were driven by our desire to do more in Afghanistan. That gets things the wrong way round. Our planned draw-down in Iraq, announced by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister last week, is driven by the conditions on the ground. It is the situation in Iraq that determines what we do there, not the situation in Afghanistan, but of course our plans for Iraq and for other operational theatres, including the Balkans, affect our ability to do more in support of NATO in Afghanistan. In that context, our decision last week on Iraq makes today's decision that much easier.
	The second misconception is that the enhancement reflects poor planning in the first place. That is simply not true. As a general point, it is wrong to suggest that any enhancement must reflect poor planning. Inevitably, much is learned during a deployment, especially in the early stages, and the force structure should adapt. That was reflected in the enhancements that we announced last July and in some aspects of the roulement announced on 1 February.
	It is however a straightforward error to interpret today's decision as implying anything about the adequacy of the Helmand taskforce. That force is clearly up to the job; it overmatched the Taliban in every engagement last summer, and during the winter it has been able to take the fight to the Taliban on our terms, while securing the area around the provincial capital and vital reconstruction projects such as the Kajaki dam.
	Today's decision is a commitment to the southern region as a whole. The additional forces will meet NATO's requirement for troops who can work across the region, in Kandahar and elsewhere. They provide commanders with greater flexibility and greater capacity to support the Afghan military while they develop the skills and confidence to do the vital work for themselves. As I have said before, that remains our long-term exit strategy.
	In announcing this significant additional commitment, I assure the House that my resolve to secure contributions from others remains undiminished. However, I put it to the House that we must protect the progress that we have made so far, and protect the Afghans' own hope and determination. That is the Government's intention. We believe in this mission; we believe in the international community's aims in Afghanistan and are proud to play our full part in achieving them.

Liam Fox: I begin by thanking the Secretary of State for his statement and prior notice of it.
	Yet again, it is to be greatly regretted that we read about the announcement of extra British troop deployments in the press at the weekend before hearing it in the House of Commons. I fully accept Ministers' assurances that they did not intend the information to come out; on this occasion, incompetence is probably preferable to contempt of the House.
	The Conservative party has always fully supported the aims of the Afghan mission, and the Secretary of State has frequently been generous in accepting and acknowledging that. We believe that it is essential that we be successful in Afghanistan for the future of global security, the future of NATO and the future of the Afghan people themselves.
	Those of us who have visited Afghanistan have marvelled at the courage and commitment, in the most difficult circumstances, of our armed forces. If our commanders in the field tell us that they need more troops to make the mission successful, clearly those troops must be supplied.
	A number of issues result from the Secretary of State's statement, however. An extra 1,400 troops are being sent, equivalent to about 20 per cent. of the current total. Is the Secretary of State satisfied that the extra equipment being sent will match that increase? In particular, does he believe that the increased number of helicopters and the requisite number of armoured vehicles will be made available sufficiently to provide fully for the security of the increased number of troops being sent?
	What will it all mean for the harmony guidelines? It is welcome that troops are coming back from Iraq, but almost exactly the same number are going to Afghanistan. Already the increased tempo and the length of separation for families are causing a retention problem, particularly in the Army. The pressure of overstretch is bearing down hard on service families. What is being done and what will be done to help them in potentially worsening circumstances? Unhappy service families are a clear recipe for unhappy servicemen and women.
	The Secretary of State was right to say that there cannot be a military solution alone in Afghanistan. Military success is dependent on political success. What is being done now to tackle the almost endemic problem of corruption in Afghanistan, including at the highest levels of the Government in Kabul? That corruption threatens to undermine the cohesion of the state of Afghanistan, and the acceptance of the authority of the Kabul Government. Corruption in the police makes progress especially difficult. Can he update the House on that problem, and tell us who is in charge of improving the situation?
	Do the Government believe that the new troop deployment is likely to be the peak United Kingdom troop level? As the House well knows, previous rumours about extra troop deployments have almost always turned out to be true. Currently, it is rumoured that the Government are already considering a further increase in troop numbers later in the year. Is that correct?
	Perhaps the most important aspect of the Secretary of State's statement today related to NATO. He said:
	"it is increasingly clear...when it comes to the most demanding tasks in the more challenging parts of Afghanistan, only we and a small number of key allies are prepared to step forward."
	That ought to give food for thought to those who want a bigger EU role in the defence of our country; it makes my blood run cold.
	The cohesion and credibility of NATO is on the line in Afghanistan. Common security must mean common burden sharing. The number of caveats at present is unacceptable. For example, German forces are not able to operate at night or be involved in counter-narcotics operations, which is not acceptable in the longer term. At the Riga summit, all the major decisions—on the longer-term role of NATO, its decision-making structure and financing—were avoided. It is a scandal that only four NATO nations now contribute more than 2 per cent. of their GDP to defence.
	The bottom line is that the United Kingdom, the United States, the Canadians and the Dutch—surprise, surprise—contribute by far the greatest to security in the southern and most dangerous part of Afghanistan. Of our 7,700 troops, 7,200 will be in Helmand—few, if any, other nations come close to that proportion. We are taking a disproportionate burden. UK taxpayers and the UK military are taking a much bigger share of the burden than we should in what is supposedly a communal operation. Our NATO partners need to recognise that if NATO is to exist and flourish in the future, that position is not tenable.

Des Browne: I, too, regret that the information leaked as it did. The hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) knows—as I spoke to him on Friday and expressed my regret—that in my view the leak was in the interests neither of the Government nor of the work that we were continuing to do in preparation for the announcement. To some degree, however, I am surprised that his words did not turn to dust in his mouth as he was saying them, because information that has been leaked to members of the Conservative party about things going on in my Department is repeatedly communicated to me at the Dispatch Box. I welcome the fact that he has committed himself to ensuring that that stops; I look forward to discussing with him how to do that, and how to ensure that members of his party do not encourage such leaking. Sometimes the information put into the public domain—he knows that I have expressed this view previously—reduces the security of our troops and operation, and is not in the interests of those troops whom some people affect to support.
	The hon. Gentleman asked about equipment, and specifically helicopters. We are increasing both our helicopter and fixed-wing airlift with the increased force levels and tasks. On helicopters, we are deploying enhanced Sea Kings to fill the medical role, which will free up more Chinooks for the transport role. We judge that we have the necessary assets to meet the requirement, but we keep that under review. On all other equipment, including Warrior armoured vehicles, I am advised that the additional equipment is exactly what is needed to support the deployment.
	The hon. Gentleman is right to say that we shall continue to operate at a high operational tempo for the foreseeable future. I am hopeful that, in at least one other theatre of operation, we shall, in the comparatively near future, be able to announce a draw-down of our troops and that, in the medium term, the pressure that those troops are under will diminish. That, however, will be a function of our ability to take forward that and other operations which I know he and his party support. We have to keep such matters under review, but it is not our intention to maintain the tempo beyond a point that is manageable for our troops.
	The hon. Gentleman is perfectly right to identify corruption as an important problem. I said in my statement that the support of the Afghan people for their Government and for our ability to deliver security is crucial, but it is also crucial that the Afghan people see that corruption is being challenged by the Government. Responsibility for seeing that through lies with President Karzai and we remind him of that on every occasion we engage with him. He has recently appointed an Attorney-General who has shown a specific commitment to that aspect of his work, and it is reported back to me that he is doing brave and good work.
	On training for the police and the armed forces, the hon. Gentleman can rest assured that those of us in NATO who have responsibility for that training, and the Americans, focus continually on corruption, but I think that the problem would be better tackled if we started to draw some of those forces from the communities that they serve rather than continuing to do as we have done, which is draw them from other parts of Afghanistan and, to some degree, impose them on communities. Our ability to get people to behave appropriately in their community depends on the community accepting them and seeing them as coming from the community, rather than as imposed on the community.
	The hon. Gentleman repeated in his own words the points that I made about the need for the burden to be shared across NATO. The House knows my view on caveats: they are restricting the commanders' ability to deploy troops appropriately where they are needed across the whole Afghanistan theatre. The sooner people remove those caveats and allow their troops to be deployed where they are most needed, the better it will be for all of us.

Don Touhig: I am sure that my right hon. Friend has considered this decision carefully, knowing the pressure that it will put on our forces. I believe that the decision is the right one, because it is important that we respond to the requests from our men on the ground and the chiefs and give our servicemen in Afghanistan every help and support they need in fighting the terrorism of the Taliban. However, will he take an early opportunity to engage in a bit of plain speaking with some of our European NATO partners? Their forces are deployed in Afghanistan to defeat terrorism, not to sit in their barracks and leave the fighting to us.

Des Browne: My right hon. Friend may well have been present at some of the conversations that I have had with some of our allies. I take every opportunity to make clear our view that the burdens and the risks should be shared across all of NATO, but the fact is that we have had a request from SACEUR. To respond to an earlier question, we were asked to provide two battlegroups for the south, but we had to balance our assessment of the need against our capacity and our belief that in the NATO mission others must also bear some of the extra burden. Our judgment, on balance and based on the advice of the chiefs, was that we should send one battlegroup and the force enhancements that I announced today and earlier this month.

Nick Harvey: I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. I begin by reaffirming the Liberal Democrats' support for our operation in Afghanistan.
	I recognise the logic that has led to the extra deployment, although I share the frustration of others at the fact that other NATO members have not been able to pick up more of the burden. Will the Secretary of State keep up the pressure on NATO allies, given that the operation could prove to be quite a long haul?
	How does today's statement square with the Ministry's commitment to end the situation in which we are operating beyond defence planning assumptions by the end of this year? Given the announcement last week of the beginning of the draw-down of troops from Iraq, will this statement not effectively undo that in one fell swoop? If we are to keep up the operation in Afghanistan over a period of years, is it not essential that we complete the draw-down from Iraq as quickly as possible, so that we do not continue operations on two fronts? The Secretary of State described the role that the four Sea Kings will play, but surely there will be a need for a great deal more than that. Has he made any progress in procuring further helicopter capacity?

Des Browne: As I said in answer to a question during Defence questions, we continue to press our allies, as appropriate and where they have the capability to deploy helicopters, to do so in a way that will support ISAF. Of course, helicopter lift is crucial to the campaign that we are involved in, as is all air lift. The hon. Gentleman, by a simple process of arithmetic, seems to relate these figures to those announced last week on Iraq, and he presses upon me the draw-down of our troops in Iraq. His party's policy is that, no matter what the circumstances, we should withdraw from Iraq. I think that he understands the Government's position—in my view, it is a more appropriate one—regarding our commitment to the Iraqi people, not to mention to the security of our own troops, which is that we will continue to look at our commitments in Iraq in relation to the conditions there. If we continue to make progress in improving the Iraqi security forces and their ability to serve the security of their own people, we can make progress—as I hope we will—in drawing down from there. However, troops are of course deployed in other theatres, and as I have said, and without wishing to be more specific than this, it is our hope that some time later this week we can announce a draw-down of troops from other theatres, which will relieve the pressure—to some small degree, I accept—on the operational tempo issue. However, it is not our intention over the medium term to be in the position that we are currently in. The situation is manageable, but I have conceded at the Dispatch Box that we cannot sustain it in the long term without doing damage to the core of our troops.

Michael Meacher: Apart from reinforcing troop numbers against the expected Taliban spring offensive in Helmand and around Kandahar, what is the precise mission objective of this newly enlarged force, what are the exact conditions that have to be met for that objective to be achieved, and within what time scale is it expected to be achieved?

Des Browne: The mission objective has not changed. It—combined with our exit strategy, which, as my right hon. Friend will be aware, is shared by at least 36 other countries and is in the context of the United Nations resolution—is to ensure that the Government of Afghanistan, elected by their own people, can deliver government, security and economic prosperity to those people. When we will achieve that I am not in position to say here, but I can tell my right hon. Friend that, as he knows, we have made significant progress in the north and west of the country toward that objective. However, given that it is one coherent country, if we do not make progress in the south and east, we will be unable to sustain the progress that we have made in the north and west. I am certain, given the fundamental logic of that, that he supports all such efforts. If so, he should ask himself whether he supports in the first place the mission to allow the people of Afghanistan to proceed toward that objective themselves, having lost 2 million of their own people in securing their freedom. If so, he should support today's announcement, because it is manifestly the right thing to do in order to achieve that objective.

James Arbuthnot: I support today's announcement, but we have been asked to provide two battlegroups and we have said that we are providing only one, so does the Secretary of State have any idea where the other battlegroup will come from? Will the further deployment place additional pressure on the training schedule, which is what makes our troops so good?

Des Browne: In my statement to the House, I said, advisedly—I cannot find the exact words—that the deployment was being made on unequivocal military advice. Those are not just words. In preparation, and in responding to the request, having been encouraged to do so by the military, I tested that advice significantly and raised the issue of pressure on our troops, because that matter is at the forefront of my mind, as I have said repeatedly at the Dispatch Box. Until I was satisfied that the deployment was manageable in relation to the troops that we have available, I was not prepared to agree that we would do it, but I am satisfied that it is right.
	There may well be a consequence for the training of some troops, because our operational tempo is higher than our planning assumptions set out. The question is whether that will damage our troops in the long term, and the advice I have is that if we are able to see it through and we do not sustain it over an extended period, we will be able to deal with the issue. However, I do not seek to present the position to the House as anything other than it is, and it would be entirely wrong of me to do so. The deployment generates a challenge in relation to training, which as a country and as a Government we need to be prepared to address in the near future.

David Crausby: Does my right hon. Friend never ask himself the question: what is the point of a NATO of that number of nations if it is not prepared to commit itself 100 per cent., without caveats, in a conflict such as that in Afghanistan? Is not it already the case that there are two types of NATO partner—those who are in it for the greater good and those who are in it for themselves?

Des Browne: I ask myself all sorts of questions but I cannot, with hand on heart, say that I have asked myself that question, or repeatedly asked it. However, I get my hon. Friend's point. With one or two exceptions—there are perhaps two parties represented in the House that wish us to withdraw from NATO—there is support for the NATO alliance on both sides of the House. There is certainly support in the official Opposition, there is support on the Liberal Democrat Benches and there is support on our Benches. Why? Because that alliance, despite all the criticisms that we may make of it, has proved to be the most enduring and effective political and military alliance the world has ever seen.

Bernard Jenkin: Until now.

Des Browne: NATO has never before been posed a challenge of this nature. Progress is being made. It is not being made, in my view, at the same pace as the challenges from the environment that we are dealing with are being generated, but progress is being made. I do not propose to talk about specific countries at the Dispatch Box, no matter how much I am encouraged to do so, but there are countries that have come a long way in a comparatively short period in terms of what they are able to do and what they are prepared politically to allow their troops to do.
	We need to consider another issue. There was evidence of that last week. The Italian Government fell because of, among other things, their commitment to Afghanistan. They may well stand up again and may be able to deal with that. In my view, they will be able to do so, but they fell and we have to recognise that when troops are deployed in such circumstances, they are subject to political developments in other countries and the rhythm of their elections. That is one of the challenges that we need to learn to recognise in these alliances, but at the end of the day I support NATO and I will continue to support and challenge the members of NATO not to be an alliance in which the burden is not shared appropriately. However, there is no alternative, in my view, to NATO and it has proved to be the most enduring and effective political and military alliance that the world has ever seen.

Peter Tapsell: To ask a question that is repeatedly asked each time we get an admission of mission creep, why are we yet again sending a small and under-supported contingent of our finest young men to risk their lives in a war in Afghanistan that even a NATO army of 100,000 could not permanently win, as the Russian commitment of 300,000 troops in the 1980s clearly demonstrated? To reverse Fouché's aphorism, it is worse than a folly; it is a crime.

Des Browne: The hon. Gentleman has the merit of consistency and he speaks regularly on this issue and challenges me in exactly the same way. I respond to him, I hope, consistently by saying that there is no comparison between what we—the world, by and large—are seeking to do in Afghanistan and what the Soviets tried to do when they invaded and took on the whole country. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman knows this, but the evidence not only from polling—whatever fragility that has—but from our troops on the ground and from our communication with the Afghan people suggests that the vast majority of the Afghan people want us to be there. They are subject in parts of Afghanistan to the most horrific violence perpetrated by a comparatively small number of people who have been practising it on them for decades. I say to the hon. Gentleman that there is significant evidence of progress and he cannot deny that. Some 5 million people who have connections with that community have gone back to live there since the world released the country from the terror of the Taliban. Those 5 million people cannot be wrong; there must be some reason for them to believe that they were going back to an improved set of circumstances.
	Of course, there are difficulties and challenges, but I spoke today to our commander on the ground and he gave me—I will repeat it to the House if it wants me to—a litany that went on for about five minutes of the progress that has been made just over the winter. He was very keen that I should make the point in the House that the ability of the Taliban has been overestimated, because they appear to be much more successful in their information operations than we and NATO have been. In his view, the Taliban in Helmand province are becoming increasingly desperate about their ability to engage with and overcome our troops. That may not continue, but there is, in his view, no sign of the expected spring offensive. That does not mean that it may not develop.
	We need to be ready for the worst possible assessment so that we are able to deal with and match the Taliban, as we have been able to do. At the same time, however, we need to bring development and economic prosperity to the people, so that they can in the long term face down the Taliban. We are making progress on that; it is not the same challenge that the Soviets took on.

David Borrow: I am concerned that those nations who are prepared to put their servicemen and women in the most dangerous situations could find support within their home communities undermined by the failure of NATO allies to get involved. Could my right hon. Friend give an assessment of how robust and for how long the existing support will continue? If there is not support for the commitment across the alliance, there is a danger that, country by country, those that are pulling their weight now may find that their Governments no longer have the support of their populations.

Des Browne: My hon. Friend puts his finger on an important point. The Taliban seek to do two things. The first is to undermine the faith of the Afghan people in the international security assistance force and the ability of their own troops to deliver security for them. Equally, the Taliban seek to undermine support in the countries that support the Afghan Government. By explaining what is actually going on and explaining in an honest and straightforward way the challenges and difficulties that we face, I hope to continue the support of the British people for what I consider to be a noble cause and, more important, an absolute necessity for our security.

Bob Russell: Today's statement confirms the point that I put to the Prime Minister back in October: the majority of EU and NATO countries are refusing to deploy their troops to Helmand province. Does the Secretary of State agree that, if those countries are refusing to help to rid the world of terrorism and are adding to the overstretch of the British armed forces, they should at least fund the operations that we are putting forward?

Des Browne: Where countries are unable, as some of them are, to provide troops that can engage in the sort of tasks that are needed in Helmand province, or where they are unwilling to do so, we suggest that they ought to find some other way of supporting the challenge that needs to be supported. That said, almost all the countries have already committed themselves, through the Afghan compact, to making contributions to the development of Afghanistan. I would not want it to be thought that I said that they were not providing money to support the Afghan Government, because most of them are.

Doug Henderson: I think that my right hon. Friend will have the full support of the House in pressing our allies in Europe and elsewhere into supporting the intervention and the effort in Afghanistan, but does he share some of my concern that if many of those nations were going to make a bigger contribution, they would already have done so? Taking his earlier point that there is no military solution, alone, to this issue, does he agree that there needs to be a rethink politically if we find that militarily we are not getting the necessary reinforcement? Does he accept that there is nothing worse that being bogged down in something over which one has little control and which one cannot win?

Des Browne: If I did not think that we could make progress in increasing security to allow the complementary elements of the appropriate comprehensive approach, which will deliver exactly what we are looking for in Afghanistan, I would not commit one further member of the British armed forces, or supporting civilians from other departments, to Afghanistan. On the contrary, I would argue for the withdrawal of our troops. I believe that we can make progress. We might not be able to make it at the pace that, ideally, we would be able to make it at if we had access to more troops, but we will be able to make progress. It is necessary for us to reinforce the progress that we have already made and to move on to the next stage, by doing what I am announcing today.

Mark Lancaster: Provincial reconstruction teams remain the cornerstone of our progress in Afghanistan. In today's statement it is significant that, for the first time, our troops will be operating in two provinces—Nimruz to the west of Helmand and Daykondi to the north of Kandahar—where no provincial reconstruction teams currently exist. What plans are there to put PRTs in those provinces, bearing in mind that six months ago scoping reports were set out? The Danes, for example, were going to go to Nimruz. However, as far as I know, there are currently no PRTs there and no nations offering to put PRTs there.

Des Browne: The hon. Gentleman is right to identify those gaps, but, of course, he will appreciate that there is a progression across Afghanistan. All that I can say to him is that my hope is that that situation is temporary and that, as we generate greater and better security in the south, we will be able to identify countries that will be willing to deploy those resources into those provinces.

Brian Jenkins: May I ask the Secretary of State to clarify part of his statement? Speaking just among ourselves, when he said that we must be realistic about how many nations have the ability to take on the tasks facing NATO in the south and the east, would he put the greatest emphasis on their lack of military capability or their lack of political will? Which is the biggest deterrent?

Des Browne: Canada, the Netherlands, Australia, Denmark, Estonia, Romania and the United States have both the capability—in differing measures—and the political will, as the evidence of their presence in their south, where they are carrying out difficult tasks, indicates. I am not in a position—and I am not inclined, in any event—to go through other nations and to categorise them one way or another. We must continue to work with our allies and to encourage them along the road that some of them have made progress along in order to be able, in an appropriate period of time, to do what we have all set out to do in Afghanistan.

John Maples: Is not one of our problems in Afghanistan the fact that we have conflicting objectives? We seek to support the Government and defeat the Taliban militarily on the one hand, but, on the other, we seek to destroy the poppy crop. May I suggest that we will never get the local political support that we need to defeat the Taliban while we continue to try to destroy what is virtually people's only source of livelihood? If we lay off the poppies, we might have a little more chance with the Taliban.

Des Browne: I am well aware of the need to balance the two objectives. The fact of the matter is that they are not unconnected. The Taliban and others prey on the population in relation to the production of poppy. Progressively, as we are able to generate the security that allows the economic development that generates alternative livelihoods, we ought to be able to address eradication. That is happening in other parts of Afghanistan, and the sooner we are able to do it in the south and the east, the sooner we will be able to make quick progress.
	As I said to the hon. Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis) earlier, I have spoken about this issue from the Dispatch Box on numerous occasions. If the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maples) would care to read what is recorded in  Hansard, he would not need to give me any lessons on the requirement to balance our desire to reduce poppy cultivation in Afghanistan with the need to maintain security and our ability to move forward.

Gordon Prentice: We heard about endemic corruption in the police earlier, but may I ask about the Afghan army, because I do not think that my friend addressed it during his statement? What progress are we making? Is there a problem with retaining Afghan soldiers, and how well equipped are they?

Des Browne: There is a problem with the retention of soldiers in the Afghan army and a challenge regarding equipment. However, my hon. Friend must realise how young the force actually is. For the assessment of the force as it is built up and progresses, I rely on those who know and understand all these things, and they tell me that the Afghan soldiers are enormously brave and capable. Given that the army has been in existence for a comparatively short time, it attracts the admiration of the British forces.
	Of course, there are significant challenges. However, I am sure that my hon. Friend will applaud the announcement by the United States of America of significant investment for the development of the Afghan security forces. However, that does not mean that there will not be setbacks to the development. As I said earlier, there is a growing realisation throughout the alliance that we will have a better prospect of developing and sustaining the Afghan security forces if we let them grow more organically from the communities with which they are involved, rather than recruiting all the members from the north and thus deploying people in the south who are ethnically different from those whom they are policing, which has been the tendency in the past.

Adam Price: Given the reported incursion of some 700 Taliban fighters over the Pakistan border to attack the Kajaki dam, does the Secretary of State understand the reasons behind President Karzai's recent statement that Pakistan was effectively operating as a sanctuary for the Taliban with the consent of the Pakistani authorities? If we cannot be assured of the full and active co-operation of Pakistan, will the deployment allow us to raise border security in the Canadian and British zones to the level already achieved in the American sector in the south-east, or will our troops, because of an open border, remain more vulnerable to attack?

Des Browne: If the hon. Gentleman has not visited the border, I am sure that he can contemplate what it looks like: it is a mountainous and rugged part of the world. Given the nature of the challenge, the history of the two countries and the movement of people back and forth over the border, it would be entirely inappropriate to seek assurances. We need the Pakistan Government and the Afghanistan Government to work together, because they have sovereignty on either side of the border, to ensure that there is not this influx of fighters, such as from among the significant number of Afghan refugees who still remain in refugee camps in Pakistan. We cannot wish that away, and we cannot separate the two countries, but NATO and the United Kingdom regularly support the Governments in working together to solve the problem, which will be with them for a significant time. We should never underestimate the contribution that Pakistan's Government have made. They have lost 700 members of their security forces in seeking to police and control the border. That is not an insignificant contribution, and we should not test their commitment to the issue against the fact that a centuries-old problem has not been solved in a comparatively small number of years.

Tom Watson: We entered Afghanistan because it was in the British interest to do so, and I commend my right hon. Friend for having the strength of character to restate the case that we should never again allow the country to become a breeding ground for terrorism. Does he agree that many Members of the House thought that the long-term test for NATO would be how it rose to the challenge of Afghanistan, and although many Members will still give the alliance their unequivocal support, as a result of his statement they will feel that its long-term future is in greater jeopardy?

Des Browne: Most challenges offer opportunities, as well as show weaknesses, and I think that over time NATO will be capable of taking the opportunities that the challenge generates. The fact is that most people who assess the strategic situation that we and the world will be in for the foreseeable future identify the fact that that we will need to be part of an alliance that is capable of doing the sort of work that we are doing in Afghanistan, capable of deploying forces in situations of conflict, and capable of supporting conflict resolution. The developed world—indeed, the world—does not have any alternative but to stand up those capabilities and develop them, as well as the political will to do that work. I am satisfied that, despite the problems faced by me, the UK Government and the alliance, the alliance will, over time, prove to be up to the challenges.

William Cash: Will the Secretary of State concede that article 5 of the north Atlantic treaty is based on mutual risk? Germany has aspirations to sit on the UN Security Council this week, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) said, it has defence and foreign policy aspirations in relation to the European Union, too. Is it possible for the Secretary of State to ask the Germans whether they would be good enough to move some of their 3,000 troops in the north down to the south?

Des Browne: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct in his shortened definition of article 5, in terms of mutual risk, and I agree with the words that he used. He can rest assured that I have asked the Governments of all the forces in Afghanistan that are capable of being deployed in the south whether they are prepared to deploy them there.

Linda Gilroy: I am sure that my right hon. Friend will join me in recognising the role that thousands of servicemen and women play in Afghanistan. They will welcome the extra flexibility that will come from the additional manoeuvre, reconnaissance and surveillance capability that he today announced will be deployed. I welcome the increase of 7 per cent. in the manning requirement of the Marines, but what is my right hon. Friend doing to ensure that we can recruit the necessary number of Marines—always acknowledging, of course, that the requirement is at a higher level than it was in 2000, before the situation in Afghanistan and Iraq developed?

Des Browne: My hon. Friend knows that recruitment is increasing. There are two challenges to sustaining the number of forces that we need: we have to recruit, and we have to retain. Retention is as much of a challenge as recruitment, as was implied in the questions asked about operational tempo. There is no question but that the effect of the sustained operational tempo on families and those who support our troops generates part of the challenge, in respect of retention. In addition, sometimes once people have experienced the operational theatres, they are satisfied, in terms of their military career, and are happy to move on, for personal development reasons—and, of course, they are free to do that. What we seek to do, as my hon. Friend knows, is identify particular challenges and deploy enhancements or encouragements in the way in which we remunerate those people so that we can hold on to them, and that is exactly what we are trying to do for the Marines.

Crispin Blunt: The Secretary of State said that the mission was in our national interest, but that is no more or less true for us than it is for our partners. What is definitively in the British national interest is allowing the Army to recover from the overstretch arising from all the missions that it has undertaken in recent years, many of which have not enjoyed enormous public support, to put it mildly, which caused greater anxiety in the Army, as there are difficulties in retention. There are ways of achieving our objectives in Afghanistan other than a military occupation in support of the Government of our choice, so if our international partners are not prepared to help us with our current strategy, will the Secretary of State keep those under review?

Des Browne: This is not a military occupation. It is support for a Government who have been properly elected on a democratic basis. Despite all the criticisms that we may make of some people who serve in that Government and of their past, they are democratically elected. More importantly, NATO, with others, is carrying out the request of the United Nations in a United Nations Security Council resolution, so it is entirely inappropriate to describe it as the hon. Gentleman did. However, on the initial part of his question, I have already recognised that operational tempo generates challenges, and I have spelt out on more than one occasion exactly what we seek to do to address that. May I just tell him that politically his party must make up its mind about where it stands? It cannot have it both ways. The Shadow Chancellor cannot suggest—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I call Mr. Hoyle.

Lindsay Hoyle: I wonder whether my right hon. Friend has considered requests to deploy the Gibraltar regiment to Afghanistan to ease the pressure on troops from the UK who have been deployed as a matter of course as a result of the revolving door situation. As he did not mention it in his announcement, will extra personnel be deployed from the medical regiment to ease the situation in Afghanistan, too?

Des Browne: I am afraid that I cannot give my hon. Friend answers to such specific questions, but I will write to him with the particulars that he seeks, and ensure that the letter is placed in the Library of the House for everyone to read. I am advised that members of the Gibraltar regiment have served with distinction in our operational theatres, but I cannot answer the very specific question that he asked because I do not have any recollection of such a request being made.

Robert Smith: In answer to an earlier question, the Secretary of State said that although the request was for two battlegroups to be deployed, he is deploying only one. Will he confirm where the other battlegroup is coming from, and what assessment has he made of the risk implications for the deployment, given that we have not been able to employ the two battlegroups that were requested?

Des Browne: This question has been asked before, and I think that the answer was implied in the information that I gave. I repeat that we were asked to provide two battlegroups for the south. We had to balance that request and our assessment of the need against our capacity and the belief that, as it was a NATO mission, others must bear some of the extra burden. Our judgment was that we could send one battlegroup to complement the force enhancements that I announced earlier this month. The request is still in place, as are other unfulfilled parts of the CJSOR—the combined joint statement of requirement—which, in my view, are responsibilities for others to pick up.

Jim Sheridan: Does my right hon. Friend understand the frustration and anger of British defence workers who have no option but to compete for contracts from companies based in NATO countries which, at a time of need, have refused to support our troops?

Des Browne: I thank my hon. Friend for that question. I always try, particularly when speaking to those who work in our very important defence industries, to understand their frustrations if they express them to me. I am sure that, throughout the country, there is no shortage of them in the state of mind that my hon. Friend suggests.

Ian Taylor: Some elements of the battlegroup that the right hon. Gentleman announced today were to be deployed to Afghanistan in the normal course of events. My son is a young officer in the 19th Royal Artillery. What extra arms and men will be available in order to hold ground and villages that are taken by the Army, which has not had the necessary resources to maintain its presence there, and what extra resources can be used to win the hearts and minds of people, in Helmand province particularly?

Des Browne: I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman's son, although I do not know him personally, and to all the others who work with him or are deployed with him—indeed, all our armed forces, who are prepared, as I am sure his son is, to accept the challenge and to carry it out, as he no doubt will, with great distinction, professionalism and courage.
	The deployment that I am announcing today is an additional deployment to enhance the ability of ISAF across Regional Command (South) to make progress on what has already been achieved. How those forces are deployed—whether they are deployed to hold ground once it has been secured, or whether operational commanders on the ground take the view that the local politicians and the Afghan forces in those communities are capable of holding that ground once it has been secured—is of course an operational matter, but the hon. Gentleman is right to suggest that this is an extremely complex environment and that, community by community, there are no simple solutions. As we have seen in the north of Helmand in Musa Qala, Sangin, Nawzad and other communities, and indeed in the Kajaki area, it is more likely that a combination of local politics and local security forces will maintain the security that we generate than that we will be able to do it in the long term.

Train Derailment (Grayrigg)

Douglas Alexander: With permission, Mr. Speaker, I shall make a statement on the train derailment which occurred near Grayrigg in Cumbria on Friday evening.
	The House will be aware that at approximately 8.15 on Friday night, 23 February, the 5.15 pm Virgin west coast service from London to Glasgow derailed just beyond the points at Lambrigg near Grayrigg. The train was travelling at around 95 mph. At the time, there were 111 passengers and four crew on board. One passenger, Margaret Masson, from Glasgow, sadly died shortly after the accident. Twenty-two people were taken to hospital, including the driver. Five people remain in hospital and three remain in a critical condition. Hon. Members in all parts of the House will wish to join me in expressing our deepest sympathy to those who have been bereaved or seriously injured, and to friends and relatives.
	I would like to praise the work of the Cumbria police, fire and rescue and ambulance services, and indeed the RAF, who worked closely together to respond with well-prepared contingency plans in very difficult circumstances. We must also thank the staff of the national health service for their care and dedication, as well as the local people who came out to help those involved at the scene of the accident.
	The rail accident investigation branch arrived at the scene at 11.35 pm and immediately began an investigation to identify the causes of the accident. The RAIB investigation is running independently and in parallel with the investigations of the British Transport police and Her Majesty's railway inspectorate. The inspectorate as safety regulator will continue to check that the network is safe and to enforce any breaches of safety legislation. The British Transport police will be investigating whether there are any breaches of criminal law. I have been in close contact over the weekend with the RAIB's chief inspector, Carolyn Griffiths, and I shall now update the House on its interim report following the first 48 hours of its investigation. Copies of that report have been placed in the Library and are publicly available. The report states that the scope of the RAIB investigation into the accident at Grayrigg includes both the design, performance, inspection and maintenance of points at Lambrigg and the behaviour of the vehicles, including interior fittings after they derailed until they came to rest.
	I will deal first with the behaviour of the vehicles, where the report states that there is no evidence available to indicate that the journey prior to the derailment had been other than normal. It goes on to state that there was substantial damage to the train. However, all carriages retained the basic structural integrity of the passenger compartment. The RAIB has yet to carry out its inspection of any of the carriage interiors.
	I will now turn to where the report deals with the points. The report states that the current focus of the RAIB's investigation relates to the condition of the Lambrigg 2B points at the site of the derailment. Indications are that these points were the immediate cause of the derailment. No evidence has been found to date that indicates that the driving of the train, the condition of the train or the signalling control system contributed to the accident.
	The report then goes on to give a detailed description of the design and condition of the facing points at Lambrigg, and concludes that the immediate cause of the accident was the condition of the stretcher bar arrangement at points 2B at the Lambrigg crossover, which resulted in the loss of gauge separation at the point of switch blades. Let me read to the House what the RAIB has to say about the points:
	"Investigation of the locking and stretcher bars in the facing points at Lambrigg crossover showed that one of three stretcher bars was missing, and bolts that secured the lock bar and another stretcher bar were not in place—some of these bolts and the associated nuts and washers were found in the ballast, but others were not. There is no evidence that the bolts had been wrenched free. Two of the stretcher bars were fractured; in one case the nature of the fracture surface indicates that it may have been consequential to the derailment. In the other case the fracture surface indicates that it may have pre-dated the derailment. The latter will be confirmed by further analysis".
	Having come to those initial findings, the RAIB is able to give urgent safety advice to the industry and make recommendations as appropriate. It has not taken such action at this stage of the investigation. However, on Saturday, Network Rail decided to complete an inspection of more than 900 similar points on other high-speed lines around the country.
	Following the derailment, the Office of Rail Regulation, as safety regulator, has been monitoring the situation and is satisfied with the actions taken by Network Rail to ensure that the railway is safe to operate. In particular, the ORR supports Network Rail's precautionary inspection of the 900 points across the network that are similar to the ones that form part of the investigation.
	The RAIB will now continue its investigation on all aspects of the derailment and its consequences, in order to produce a final report. As it says in its interim report, it will continue to investigate the immediate and underlying reasons for the condition of the stretcher bars and the behaviour of the rolling stock in the extreme conditions of a high-speed derailment.
	The RAIB final report will take some months to prepare. In light of its interim report we know how the accident happened. Now, we and the travelling public need to know why. Let me assure the House that if in the course of their investigations the investigators discover something that needs to be done to improve safety, it will be done immediately.

Chris Grayling: I start by thanking the Secretary of State for giving me early sight of the statement.
	I know that the whole House will want to join the right hon. Gentleman in his expression of condolence to the family of Margaret Masson, the lady who died in the accident on Friday. We join him in sending our best wishes to all those who were injured, including two members of Mrs. Masson's family, and we hope that they make a speedy recovery. I would also like to associate myself and my colleagues with the tributes to the driver of the train, Iain Black, who clearly demonstrated great personal courage at the time of the accident. We hope that he makes a full recovery from his injuries.
	It is at times like this that we appreciate how well served we are by our emergency services in this country. This was an extremely difficult incident to deal with in a remote location, set away from major roads, but clearly the police, fire and ambulance services, the RAF and the local NHS in Cumbria responded quickly and effectively to the accident and we have every reason to be grateful to them.
	We should also be grateful to the other group that tends to do so much when major accidents take place and whose contribution can sometimes be overlooked: members of the public and local residents. Local voluntary groups swing into action. The doors of homes, pubs, schools and community centres are quickly opened to those involved in the accident. We send our thanks to the local community in Cumbria, which responded so quickly and so well. It is also a tribute to rail staff that they moved so quickly to deal with the consequences of the accident for other rail passengers and to restore services on the remainder of the west coast main line.
	It is clearly a matter of serious concern that such an accident could take place on one of our most important rail routes. Moreover, it appears that there may have been an operational failure within Network Rail, and that must be addressed as a matter of urgency. I am grateful for the Secretary of State's reassurance that any recommendations for urgent safety improvements during the RAIB investigation will be acted on promptly.
	Although every fatal accident on our railways is a tragedy, it is a credit to the rail industry that statements such as today's are so rare. Safety standards on our railways are now higher than they have ever been. Inevitably, and partly because it is now so rare, an accident such as this commands extensive media attention. Clearly, it is absolutely vital that there be a full and proper investigation of Friday's events. We owe that to the people who have suffered as a result of what took place. Does the Secretary of State agree, however, that the worst possible outcome of the past few days would be if the accident served to undermine confidence generally in rail travel in this country? I hope that Members on both sides of the House will reinforce the message that rail remains an extremely safe way to travel, even though it is vital that the lessons from Friday's accident be learned and acted upon.

Douglas Alexander: I am sure that the relatives of the victims of the accident on Friday evening will be very grateful for the hon. Gentleman's remarks. I very much appreciate the measured response taken by him and by several colleagues in the House since the tragic events on Friday evening. Let me also thank him for the general tenor of his remarks, which reflects the reality that, notwithstanding the tragedy and the lessons that will need to be learned, a general message should go out from this House today that we have seen significant improvements in rail safety in recent years, and we must be cautious in our language, to ensure that we do not undermine the rightful degree of confidence that people feel in rail travel. At the same time, of course, given the tragedy that occurred on Friday evening and the inevitable public concern that has arisen as a consequence, it is important that the public realise that this investigation will be most thorough, and that, as I say, we shall take forward the recommendations of the inquiry.

Ian Davidson: I thank the Minister for his expressions of condolence following the death of my constituent, Margaret Masson. I am heartened, as are many of my constituents, by the speed at which the investigation has progressed. Can he give me an assurance that as much information will be produced as quickly as possible in order that the family of my dead constituent and those who were injured can put this matter behind them as soon as possible in the full knowledge that everything has been revealed?

Douglas Alexander: I am of course happy to give the undertaking that, in a manner consistent with the work that has already been undertaken, whereby an interim report has been published on the Monday following the accident on the Friday evening, the inquiry will be taken forward expeditiously. That said, it is important to place on record the fact that that we must allow the investigators the opportunity to carry out a very thorough inquiry. They have made it clear that if in the course of that inquiry they uncover evidence that suggests that action needs to be taken ahead of the publication of the final report, they will have no hesitation in bringing that information to our attention, and in turn we would have no hesitation in acting in response to their recommendations.

Alistair Carmichael: I, too, thank the Secretary of State for allowing me early sight of the statement and of the interim report by the rail accident investigation branch. I associate myself and my right hon. and hon. Friends with the expressions of sympathy to the family of Margaret Masson and to all those who suffered serious injury in the accident. Let me also say, as did the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), that the conduct of the driver of the train seems to have been particularly courageous and professional, and that should be properly recognised. I also welcome the Secretary of State's commitment that, should the investigation highlight any such need, all necessary action will be taken. It is important that we maintain confidence in our railways as a safe way to travel.
	It is early days, but it seems apparent from the interim report that the circumstances of the accident are very similar to those at Potters Bar. The Secretary of State will be aware that the Health and Safety Executive produced an extensive and very helpful report at the conclusion of the incident. Will he confirm that all the HSE's recommendations and conclusions produced on that occasion have been fully implemented? Will he ensure that the ongoing investigation will look into the use of emergency hammers on these trains? Will he establish whether they were used on this occasion and, if so, how they were found to perform? I have received representations that led me recently to seek a meeting with the Rail Safety and Standards Board. I have not yet had that meeting, but I believe that there could be lessons to learn.

Douglas Alexander: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his remarks and, indeed, for the tributes that he paid to the driver and other railway staff who were working on Friday evening. He is right to characterise this as early days. I appreciate that the focus of the investigation is the points at Lambrigg—clearly, the prior investigation into the incident at Potters Bar identified the issue of the points—but I would be cautious at this stage about drawing too direct a parallel, in the sense that we need to allow the investigators of the latest accident to take their work forward. We know that the centre of their efforts relates to the points, but it is important to understand better the circumstances explaining how the points were in this condition. On the hon. Gentleman's more general point, we have taken forward recommendations in the light of the HSE report on Potters Bar.
	On the hon. Gentleman's final question about hammers, I would make a couple of points. First, I fully expect the investigators to look at all the relevant issues, including the ability to leave the train after the derailment. However, I would certainly point out that one of the features that many people have commented on, even in the past 48 hours, is the extent to which both the Pendolino structure and, in particular, the laminated glass on the train withstood what was inevitably a very high-impact crash. It is a great tribute to the engineering of the Pendolino that there were not multiple fatalities as a result of a very high-speed impact on Friday evening.

Gwyneth Dunwoody: No one who saw the derailment of those carriages and the engine could do anything other than marvel at the miracle that saved so many lives. That was a tribute not just to the engineers for the original design, but to the speed of response by the emergency services, as well as the courage and efficiency of the driver. Will my right hon. Friend assure us that, when the RAIB looks closely at the design of the existing carriages, it will also pass on the information to those working in the industry to ensure that it is taken up? Over and above that, can we be certain that, in the event of our being faced with something even vaguely like this happening again in some other field, the lessons of having to bring in emergency services in extremely difficult circumstances over difficult terrain will have been passed to other areas and will have been learned?

Douglas Alexander: Let me address both those points. First, I am able to offer my hon. Friend the assurance that she seeks on sharing widely with the industry the results of the RAIB's work. On her second point about the co-operation of the emergency services on Friday evening and what lessons can be shared more widely, as one of the Ministers responsible for the Civil Contingencies Bill, I am glad to say that there is now a framework whereby such lessons can be effectively shared. I am sure that, in the normal course of events, the emergency services will want to review the action that was taken on Friday evening. Certainly, the initial indications from a number of people who have spoken to me who were present at the scene were that there was a very effective degree of co-ordination among the emergency services in, as my hon. Friend acknowledged, extremely difficult circumstances—not simply the location, but the weather and the time on Friday evening at which the crash occurred. I am sure that there will be opportunities for whatever lessons can be learned—notwithstanding the success achieved by the emergency services on Friday evening—to be distributed widely across the emergency services throughout the country.

Tim Farron: I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. I spent this morning at the crash site near Grayrigg in my constituency, and while I was there I spoke to residents who told me of their horror at the occurrences on Friday evening. Given that the site is accessible only across farmland, will the right hon. Gentleman acknowledge that the wholehearted efforts of the local community were invaluable, and that their support and assistance now is worthy of the highest tribute? Does he also recognise that the whole community of Grayrigg has emerged with unsought-after but none the less heroic credit as a result of its support?
	May I also join the Secretary of State in acknowledging that the local emergency services and hospitals deserve high commendation? All performed their roles with the sensitivity and effectiveness that we have come to expect in our part of Cumbria. I also wish to join him in extending my sincere sympathy to the family of Mrs. Margaret Masson, who tragically lost her life, and to all the other victims of this horrific crash. We and they will want answers as to how and why this disaster occurred. I understand that these are early days, but given that today's interim report suggests that, as with Potters Bar, points failure seems to be the most likely cause of the accident, will the Secretary of State consider holding a public inquiry so that the full facts of this terrible tragedy can be revealed in full and in public, in order to reinforce confidence in our rail network?

Douglas Alexander: I find myself in support of the overwhelming majority of the hon. Gentleman's points. First, on behalf not only of the Government but, I am sure, of the whole House, I would wish him to pass on directly to his constituents our gratitude and admiration for the action that they took in what he described as "unsought-after" circumstances. He is right to acknowledge that there was a degree of heroism shown by the community on Friday evening. That heroism has been matched in recent hours and days by a degree of forbearance, given, for example, the fact that to move the heavy lifting equipment to the site in order to remove the carriages, significant disturbance to the adjacent farmland will be necessary. I am sure that all hon. Members are grateful to his constituents for their forbearance and understanding in what are inevitably very difficult circumstances.
	Similarly, I associate myself with the hon. Gentleman's comments on the NHS staff in Cumbria. I place on record the fact that it was an operation of such significance that NHS staff from far beyond Cumbria were also involved. It brings great credit to our national health service that all those resources were deployed in such difficult circumstances.
	On the hon. Gentleman's final substantive point about a public inquiry, I do not believe that today is the day on which to make such a judgment. We have had an interim report after only 48 hours, and the right and appropriate response of the Government is to allow the investigators to take forward their work. We will draw the appropriate conclusions when that work has been concluded.

Mark Lazarowicz: As has just been mentioned, this is a difficult site, and it is obviously important that the repairs are carried out properly and that the investigators are able to carry out all the investigations that they need to carry out. Can my right hon. Friend give us any idea of when services might return to normal on that line? Will he also tell us what arrangements are being made in the meantime for alternative services and diversions of trains?

Douglas Alexander: I should perhaps express an interest at this point. I travelled on the west coast main line on Friday afternoon. I was actually due to take the overnight sleeper north from Euston to Glasgow on Friday evening. It is a service that I use most weeks, and it has seen significant improvements in recent years. The best indications that we have had from Network Rail and those working at the site are that it will take between 10 days and two weeks for normal services to be established once again. Services are operating, however, with a bus service running from Lancaster to Carlisle and, given the existence of the Carlisle-Settle railway, it will be possible for services to run directly from Euston to Glasgow notwithstanding the ongoing work that will be necessary at the site of the crash.

Bob Russell: Will the Secretary of State put this tragedy into context by informing the House how many people were killed in rail crashes last year and how many in road crashes? Assuming that the daily carnage on our roads has been repeated in the three days since this rail tragedy, will he confirm that something like 30 people will have been killed in road crashes in that time? How many road deaths does it take to get him to come to the Dispatch Box to talk about road crashes?

Douglas Alexander: It is appropriate to take a responsible and measured approach to the challenge of safety on our roads and on our railways. To the extent that the hon. Gentleman points out that a great deal more work has still to be done on road safety, of course I agree with him. On an average weekend, about 21 people are killed in road accidents. I do think, however, that it is appropriate to have made a statement to the House at the earliest opportunity, given the public concern that inevitably and understandably has arisen as a result of Friday evening's significant derailment.
	Of course, I and my colleague Ministers are available to the House on a monthly basis to answer questions on transport policy, including road safety policies. I also suggest to the hon. Gentleman that he take the opportunity to look at the road safety review that my Department is due to publish, which shows its ongoing commitment to continue to drive down the number of those who are killed and seriously injured on our roads.

Russell Brown: As a regular user of the west coast main line, I, too, pay tribute to the driver of the train involved in Friday's accident, Iain Black. It is reassuring to know that drivers of his calibre are in charge of the many thousands of passengers who use our railways each day. The investigation of the accident will be vital. Will my right hon. Friend assure the House that if any recommendation requires further overseeing of maintenance or work carried out on the tracks, we shall ensure that it, and every other recommendation, is met in full?

Douglas Alexander: I associate myself with the tributes paid by my hon. Friend. I want to make a couple of points. First, as I have already intimated to the House, if recommendations result from the ongoing work of the investigators ahead of the publication of the final report, of course we will have no hesitation in ensuring that they are implemented. It will be for the rail accident investigation branch to make any recommendations when it concludes its report. Of course, we will give those serious consideration and seek to implement recommendations that will improve the safety of the travelling public.

Gordon Prentice: My friend told us that Network Rail checked 900 sets of points. How often are those points routinely checked? Is that a matter of visual examination or do points suffer from metal fatigue? When were the points at Grayrigg last inspected?

Douglas Alexander: On the general regime, that is a matter of which the chief executive of Network Rail has been speaking in the last 48 hours. It has a regime that involves weekly and monthly inspection, as well as, as I recall, 13-weekly inspection. There is also now a train, which moves across the UK network, that can continually videotape the track to provide a visual record of its condition. However, given that we are only at the interim report stage and that these matters are subject to ongoing inquiries by the investigators, it would not be appropriate for me to give undertakings on behalf of Network Rail. Ultimately, it is for Network Rail to account to the rail accident investigation branch as to the particular circumstances that gave rise to these events.

Tom Watson: I share the sentiments of condolence expressed by my right hon. Friend. Early indications show that the rolling stock on the Pendolino train displayed a robustness never seen before on the rail network. Does he agree that that is a testament to the dedication and skill of the engineers and technicians of the west midlands, many of whom designed and produced the safety features on the Pendolino train? Given that Alstom has chosen to close the plant in the midlands, does he not think it vital that we do everything we can to retain the skills of those people in the service of the UK rail industry?

Douglas Alexander: I certainly associate myself with the tributes that have been paid to the engineers and to the workers who helped to manufacture those trains. Sir Richard Branson described the Pendolino when he visited the site of the incident as "built like a tank". All the indications that we will all have seen on our television screens suggest that the carriages were able to withstand Friday evening's high-impact crash with far better consequences for those on board than would have been the case with more traditional rolling stock, where the structural integrity of the carriages might well have been compromised.
	My hon. Friend is right to acknowledge that Alstom manufactured those carriages in Birmingham in the west midlands. I pay tribute to the work that those people have done. As is the case not simply in Birmingham, but in Derby and elsewhere, the Government are keen to ensure that those skills continue to be available to the British rail industry, because, as we have seen in recent days, they produce a prime product.

Brian H Donohoe: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the question of how rail is maintained leads one to support what Sir Richard Branson said in the aftermath of the incident, which is that some vertical reintegration must be reintroduced so that the train operating company has a say on the level of maintenance on that particular railway? Does my right hon. Friend also accept that there is a need to monitor the reuse of those coaches to ensure that they are fit for purpose?

Douglas Alexander: I am not convinced by my hon. Friend's argument. First, as part of a measured response to the terrible accidents and events that occurred on Friday evening, it is right to recognise that there has been significant investment in the network in recent years and a consequential improvement in safety.
	At this stage, I do not want to prejudge the ongoing investigation of the rail accident investigation branch, but I cannot say that it is obvious that rail safety on the west coast main line would be improved by breaking up the ownership of that railway into any number of different train operating companies that would have responsibility for the maintenance and safety of individual pieces of the track.
	Real progress has been made in recent years, and it would be appropriate at this stage to leave it to the rail accident investigation branch to find out why we encountered those terrible circumstances on Friday evening.

Jim Devine: I associate myself with the tributes to Iain Black, a member of ASLEF. Will my right hon. Friend join me in congratulating that organisation on its mature and measured responses since the accident, led by its general secretary and also its Scottish secretary, Kevin Lindsay, who is a constituent of mine? In the light of that mature approach to industrial relations, and to encourage partnership working in the railway industry, will my right hon. Friend consider allocating seats on the RAIB to the trade unions?

Douglas Alexander: It is fair to acknowledge that trade unions play an important role in the rail industry, and I am happy to confirm that at the Dispatch Box today.
	On the ongoing work of the rail accident investigation branch, I should say that its remit stretches widely. If any organisation—be it ASLEF or any other trade union—or any individual has information relevant to the circumstances of the Grayrigg crash, I strongly encourage them to bring that information to the RAIB's attention; I am sure that it would lend a willing ear to it.

Opposition Day

[7th Alloted Day]
	 — 
	Royal Navy

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Mr. Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister. I remind the House that Back-Benchers' speeches are limited to eight minutes. That, of course, does not apply to Front Benchers, although they might bear in mind the time available when making their comments.

Liam Fox: I beg to move,
	That this House notes the assessment of the Government's 1998 Strategic Defence Review that two Future Aircraft Carriers are needed in the post-Cold War world to provide a seaborne base from which British military power can be projected and that a destroyer and frigate fleet of more than 30 ships would be needed to maintain two concurrent medium-scale deployments; views with concern the view expressed by Admiral Sir Alan West, when First Sea Lord in 2004, that the reduction of the destroyer and frigate total from 35 to 25, instead of the 32 promised in the Strategic Defence Review, meant that the country was taking risk on risk; notes with dismay persistent suggestions that six more will be mothballed, leaving an effective destroyer and frigate force of only 19; demands urgent clarification from the Government about its proposal to close Portsmouth or Devonport naval bases and calls upon the Government to provide an assessment of the implications for the long-term strategic vulnerability of the remnants of the surface fleet; sympathises with Admiral Sir Jonathon Band, the current First Sea Lord, that a failure to proceed with the Future Aircraft Carriers, which have still not been ordered though scheduled in 1998 for deployment by 2012 and 2015, would make his position untenable; and calls on the Government to clarify its intention on naval procurement in the forthcoming Comprehensive Spending Review.
	This is the first time during my 15 years in the House that I have managed the treble: questions, a statement and the debate in the one day. It is a pity that I did not secure the Adjournment debate and get a full house.
	I thank my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis), who has consistently championed the Royal Navy and done a great deal of research on that front as part of the shadow Defence team.
	In a recent debate, I put on record my party's support for the strategic defence review undertaken in 1998. It was a good review, which came to sensible conclusions about the sort of threats that the United Kingdom was likely to face. The review was reasonable in its expectation that the United Kingdom should be able to carry out one medium-sized and one small operation simultaneously, plus an occasional additional small operation. However, the defence planning assumptions that flowed from that have been exceeded in each of the past four years. In July 1998, the SDR promised the replacement of
	"our current carriers from around 2012 by two larger, more versatile, carriers capable of carrying a more powerful force".
	At the same time, it was decided to reduce the number of attack submarines
	"over the next few years from 12 to 10"
	and the destroyer and frigate fleet from 35 to 32. It was also decided that
	"22 modern Sandown and Hunt class mine-hunters would be sufficient rather than 25 as previously planned".
	The then First Sea Lord reluctantly accepted those reductions, given the promise of new carriers.
	The case for the carriers was simple: the ability to deploy offensive air power was central to future force projection operations. However, we could not be certain that we would always have access to suitable air bases. The two proposed new carriers would constitute a seaborne base from which a combined force of Royal Navy and RAF aircraft would be able to operate.
	At the time, the reduction in the destroyer and frigate total to 32 was based on the numbers needed for "two concurrent medium-scale deployments", and the loss of two submarines from the 12-strong attack force was excused on the basis that all 10 attack submarines would be equipped to fire Tomahawk land attack missiles. At the same time, the Government undertook to remedy long-standing undermanning in the Royal Navy. They claimed that personnel released by the changes set out would be redeployed across the service to meet shortfalls. Once manpower problems had been solved, they said, the net effect of the review on the Navy's regular manpower requirement would be a reduction of some 1,400. Of course, the actual reduction since 1997, when the Government came to power, has been 10,000.
	In December 2003, another defence White Paper entitled, "Delivering Security in a Changing World", again stressed the role of the Royal Navy in projecting force from the "sea onto the land". However, a hint of what was to come was clear:
	"Some of our older vessels contribute less well to the pattern of operations that we envisage and reductions in their numbers will be necessary."
	A supporting essay to the White Paper stated:
	"Since SDR our Armed Forces have conducted operations that have been more complex and greater in number than we had envisaged. We have effectively been conducting continual concurrent operations, deploying further afield, to more places, more frequently and with a greater variety of missions than set out in the SDR planning assumptions. We expect to see a similar pattern of operations in the future, with the emphasis on multiple, concurrent Medium and Small Scale deployments. A major lesson of the last five years is that the Department and the Armed Forces as a whole have to be structured and organised to support a fairly high level of operational activity at all times."
	Despite the White Paper's admission that operations had been more numerous and varied than the SDR had expected, on 21 July 2004 a supplement to the White Paper was published that proposed cutting the size of the fleet. Once again, the praises were sung of the yet-to-be-ordered future carriers and joint combat aircraft, as well as the new assault ships, HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark, and the forthcoming Bay-class landing ships. The logic of the Government's treatment of the Royal Navy up to this point runs as follows: all the armed forces were scaled down at the end of the cold war, but adjustments were needed to reflect the strategic shift from a defensive role in Europe to the mounting of far-flung operations from a sea base. That required large strike carriers as a centrepiece, and a loss of five frigates and submarines was apparently a price worth paying in 1998.
	Instead of being cut from 35 to 32, however, the frigate and destroyer force has been cut from 35 to 25. Instead of being reduced from 12 to 10, the submarine force has been cut from 12 to a maximum of eight. The carriers—one of which was supposed to be in service by 2012—have not yet been firmly ordered, and the Government are now giving no target in-service dates, despite their previous willingness to do so. The projected 12 Type 45 destroyers, which have a key role in the air defence of the sea base, have been reduced to a programme of eight, but only six have been ordered, and ships seven and eight may never be built.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: It is interesting to hear the hon. Gentleman's comments about reductions to 25. Would he care to comment on the report for the Economic Research Council—which I understand is chaired by Lord Biffen, who was a Minister in Mrs. Thatcher's Conservative Government—which calls for the Royal Navy's fleet of frigates and destroyers to be slashed from 25 to 14 and for investment in unmanned aerial drones? Will that be the future Conservative policy?

Liam Fox: I am not responsible for the policies of all sorts of groups outside the House, as the hon. Lady well knows. Perhaps she might want to think of a more pertinent point next time.
	On the subject of ship reductions, such massive reductions might have been expected if events since the publication of the SDR had shown the world to be a safer and more secure place—but it is not. The escalation of the conflict in Afghanistan, leading to the increased deployment that we have heard about recently, the continuing threat of Islamist terror, the Iranian nuclear programme, the North Korean bomb and Russia's rearmament are all testament to that. The number and variety of operational deployments have consistently exceeded the assumptions of SDR, but what has the Government's response been? It has been to weaken the Royal Navy drastically by reducing the total of its major warships, while disingenuously arguing that their replacements need be fewer in number because each will be more powerful than its predecessor.

Tobias Ellwood: I hope to offer a more sensible intervention than the last one. Does my hon. Friend agree that the importance of the Type 45 is that it has a radar system that makes up for the inadequacies caused by the removal of the Sea Harriers? Unless we have the full selection of 12 Type 45s, we will not be able to provide the umbrella of protection that we need for our fleet when it is at sea.

Liam Fox: My hon. Friend is correct about the capability. The worry about decreasing from 12 to 10 to eight to perhaps six Type 45s is that the level of cover would be far too low, given the potential operational requirements.
	I have a problem with the whole concept of "capability rather than platforms" that the Government advance. Their argument that they were able to reduce numbers because they did not previously understand the capability of what was coming is untenable, because the capability of the new generation destroyers, submarines and surveillance aircraft were perfectly well known to the MOD when the original totals were agreed in the SDR in 1998—before the Kosovo campaign, before 9/11, before the invasion of Afghanistan and before the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
	In the case of the Type 45 destroyers, not only may the total be as low as half a dozen, but the repeated requests of the Royal Navy for them to be fitted with Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles have been flatly refused by the Government.

Julian Brazier: My hon. Friend is making a powerful case. Does he agree that there is an additional argument if increased capability is used as an excuse for reducing numbers? What about the other side? Presumably, any potential enemy's capability is increasing in the same way.

Liam Fox: Indeed, although I caution my hon. Friend against applying logic too closely to MOD policy, as he might find it lacking.
	The dubious rationale for the policy advanced by the Government is that what matters is capability, not platform numbers. That argument was elevated to the status of a doctrine by the then Secretary of State for Defence, the right hon. Member for Ashfield (Mr. Hoon), in a lecture at the Royal United Services Institute on 26 June 2003. He concluded that "advances in technology" and
	"the astonishing speed with which we can increasingly operate"
	meant that
	"Measuring the capability of our Armed Forces by the number of units or platforms in their possession will no longer be significant".
	Perhaps we cannot disregard increases in capability, but to say that measuring the number of units or platforms in the possession of our armed forces will no longer be significant strikes me as completely irresponsible.
	In response to that statement, the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Alan West, told the magazine  Warships International Fleet Review, in an "emperor's new clothes" moment, that
	"no matter how good a ship is, it can only be in so many places at any one time."
	That was a specific rebuttal of the then Secretary of State's argument that the number of units or platforms would no longer be significant in measuring the capability of the armed forces. Admiral Sir Alan West also pointed out that
	"You need a lot of Type 45s to give the same coverage as a naval air-defence fighter."—
	a reference to the calculated risk taken in phasing out the FA2 Sea Harrier six years before the joint combat aircraft was expected to come into service with the first of the new carriers in 2012.

Tom Watson: As a very short-lived former member of the Admiralty Board, I came to today's debate to voice some sympathy with the sentiments expressed to the House. I understand the list of criticisms that the hon. Gentleman has made, but we will put those right only with extra investment. Is he bringing new money to the Navy today, or is he going to give us his usual list of uncosted whinges?

Liam Fox: There will probably come a point in the not-too-distant future when I will be on the Government Benches answering the questions and taking responsibility for policy. In the meantime, it is this Minister and this Government who need to answer for one basic fact. They set out the defence planning assumptions that came from the SDR, and they are responsible for the overstretch. Either they need to reduce those assumptions or they must increase the resources to match them. What they cannot do is to continue with those assumptions in the light of the current force strength. Doing so produces continual overstretch, the results of which we see daily. As is customary for the Opposition—and as Labour did when in opposition—we will produce our own review of what we believe to be this country's foreign policy imperatives, and from that we will conduct a full review when we take office, as the Government did in 1998. In the meantime, it is up to the Government to defend their stewardship of our armed forces, which I am afraid has been lacking up to now.

Doug Henderson: rose—

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: rose—

Liam Fox: I shall give way again in a moment; I am aware of your strictures about time, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
	On the decision to dispose of three Type 42 destroyers and three Type 23 frigates, the First Sea Lord said:
	"My gut feeling is that we need a destroyer/frigate force of about 30 ships...I would still much rather not be losing those three Type 23s. It is a painful cut, and I believe we are taking a risk. We shouldn't delude ourselves."
	Referring to the Type 45s, he added:
	"To put Tactical Tomahawk in a Type 45 destroyer requires a relatively insignificant amount of money, and exploits the virtues of a platform you've already paid for. The problem is there is no money. I had hoped, I have to say, that we might have had a nod in that direction. But we haven't, and it will have to fight its way through the equipment programme in the normal way."
	His conclusion was chilling:
	"What people do need to be aware of is that there is a risk with these reductions...my concern overall is that we are taking risk on risk"—
	a risk for which the Government are answerable.

Doug Henderson: I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. There might be an argument as to whether the required number of ships is the number that he says is necessary, or the number that the Government are introducing. Setting that aside, if his figures are correct—and in the light of the question from my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich, East (Mr. Watson)—where would the money come from? If he is not prepared to say, that is very unfair. Would it come from another part of the defence budget, and if so, which part? If not, from which other public expenditure budget would it come?

Liam Fox: These are not my figures but those that the Government produced as a result of the SDR. This is the number of ships that the Government said that they required in the armed forces to carry out their policy, as a result of their own defence review. My question is: what has changed? According to the defence planning assumptions arising from the SDR analysis, the Government required a certain number of ships. They did not change those assumptions, and I imagine that that they are not changing now. Why, therefore, has the number of ships required to carry out those assumptions gone down? It is not me who has said that we are taking "risk on risk"; rather, it was the former First Sea Lord. I am simply putting it to the Government that those carrying out the policy described by the Government in the SDR believe that they are not being given the tools to do the job that they need to do.
	When we take office, we will look at the defence planning assumptions and we might conclude that a different foreign policy would require a different shape of defence, and if so, we will set it out. However, discussing that is not the purpose of today's debate; its purpose is to hold the Government to account for their stewardship of the Royal Navy, which, in the words of those in it, seems to be failing very badly.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: rose—

Tom Watson: rose—

Liam Fox: I will continue, if I may.
	When the First Sea Lord talked about the Government taking risks, what did he mean? We live in a hugely interdependent global trade environment in which none of us will be immune to potential damage inflicted on partner economies. Much of this trade is maritime trade. Seaborne terrorism could cripple global trade, and we already know, for example, of al-Qaeda's plans to blow up ships as they sail through maritime "choke points" such as Suez, Panama and the straits of Malacca. Admiral West continued to spell out his concerns both up to and after his retirement. At the beginning of 2006, he drew an unfavourable comparison between the 65 destroyers and frigates available at the time of the Falklands war and the 25 available now. He said:
	"Whenever the UK has got to the stage when it is spending too little on defence, the nation has suffered, due to some unforeseen event not long afterwards...Maybe I'm just a silly old b****** but I've got 41 years experience of these things and I can tell you we need 30 destroyers and frigates for what the Government wants us to do."
	The following month, the Public Accounts Committee found that about a third of the armed forces were not ready to go to war, with the situation facing the Navy being of particular concern. The report followed a study by the National Audit Office in 2005, which found that 60 per cent. of the fleet was in a good state of readiness, with 24 ships placed on reduced support status and a sixfold increase in the practice of cannibalisation, whereby some ships are stripped of vital components, such as sonar equipment and missile systems, to keep others in operation.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: rose—

Liam Fox: I give way to the hon. Lady in the hope, perhaps vain, that we will hear a better point this time.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is extremely knowledgeable about naval matters, but he persists in quoting the previous First Sea Lord and has twice mentioned the term "overstretch". I was at a briefing last Monday with the current First Sea Lord when one of the hon. Gentleman's Conservative colleagues asked the same question as him, saying that the Navy was overstretched. The First Sea Lord emphatically denied that, saying, "Stretched, certainly—given current commitments that is inevitable—but overstretched, certainly not."

Liam Fox: The hon. Lady will be delighted when I come to what the current First Sea Lord said before pressure for a correction was applied by the Ministry of Defence.
	It was only to be expected that, having devastated the size of the fleet, the Government would turn their attention to the infrastructure that supports it. Consequently, a review of the three existing naval bases—Devonport, Portsmouth and Faslane—has begun, generating widespread fear that either Devonport or Portsmouth will be closed. The strategic folly of forcing the Royal Navy to depend on a single south-coast naval base is too obvious to require elucidation, yet some naval staff officers are contemplating it if the alternative is to lose even more warships from the front line.
	In a debate in Westminster Hall on 5 December, a junior Defence Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg), who is in the Chamber today, said:
	"We also need to look at our support capacity at the naval bases, to ensure that it is matched appropriately to the future needs of the Royal Navy. We need to ensure that every penny counts and that resources are rightly focused on the front line. We must not lose sight of the fact that the number of ships requiring maintenance and repair has been steadily reducing."—[ Official Report, Westminster Hall, 5 December 2006; Vol. 454, c. 73WH.]
	It was pointed out to the Minister that the situation was simply a result of the Government's decision to cut the size of the fleet but, despite promising to return to that point later in his speech, he did not do so. Perhaps the Minister of State will deal with it when he speaks in a moment.
	Worse was to follow when, only three days later, a tabloid newspaper reported that under a plan to help to pay for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, a further six destroyers and frigates
	"would be tied up in harbour on a 'reduced state of readiness' leaving just 19 fully-operational escort ships"
	compared with the 55 destroyers and frigates in the Japanese navy. Far from denying that that was under consideration, an MOD source was quoted as saying:
	"Just because a proposal is looked at by officials does not mean that it will be implemented."
	Those of us who have served in ministerial office can understand the well-hidden code in that sentence.
	It thus appears that the Royal Navy is threatened not just with a choice between losing more warships and closing a major base but, quite possibly, with the loss of both. How much longer can or will the process be allowed to continue on the back of the promise—yet to be carried out—of a firm order for the two aircraft carriers? How secure is the carrier project itself?

Gary Streeter: My hon. Friend and I were elected to this place in 1992. Can he remember a time since then when the world was more dangerous and uncertain than it is today? Is not it utter folly to continue to salami-slice our Navy? Now there is the ludicrous proposal that we might go down to having one base on the southern coast, either at Portsmouth or at Plymouth, so will he give me a firm assurance that we will strongly oppose the continuing salami-slicing of our Navy and that we will not accept a reduction to only one naval base on the southern coast?

Liam Fox: There are times when the Government of the day decide that it is appropriate to reduce the size of the defence budget or to reduce the size of the armed forces. Indeed, after "Options for Change", we ourselves decided that, with the end of the cold war, it was reasonable to see a reduction in the size of our armed forces. However, against a backdrop of increasing international tension and of increasing deployment of our forces, it is not reasonable to cut the size of the forces themselves. I cannot recall a time when we asked our forces to do more while we were cutting their size. That is what is unprecedented.
	On the issue of the carriers, the former First Sea Lord, having ring-fenced £3.5 billion for their construction, said:
	"The carrier programme is the jewel in the crown of the Strategic Defence Review. Yet there are officials within the MoD casting lascivious looks at it. There is no doubt the rats are out there having a nibble. If Britain wants to remain a world power and to operate with a deal of freedom around the world, these two carriers are vital."
	I share that view.

Angela Watkinson: Does my hon. Friend agree that the policy of freezing promotion for lieutenants in the Royal Navy will have an adverse effect on recruitment because new recruits at Dartmouth will not be able to see a clear career path? Furthermore, officers who have already served as lieutenants for a considerable time and who would normally expect to be promoted will now find that their career has hit the buffers so they may even consider retiring from the Navy. The policy will therefore affect retention as well. What does my hon. Friend think about that?

Liam Fox: Many of us have received representations on this issue from those serving in the Royal Navy. There are of course inevitable consequences for manpower if we keep reducing the number of ships in the surface fleet. The Minister of State is vigorously shaking his head, so it is clearly an issue that he wants to address in his speech. I hope that my hon. Friend will get a suitable answer from him on the future plan for career paths in the Royal Navy.
	There is a growing view that we are in danger of sacrificing long-term investment in properly balanced armed forces, behaving instead like "tin-pot countries" that exhaust their defence budgets on running rather than developing services. Abandoning major equipment programmes because of short-term campaign pressures ignores the fact that the United Kingdom could be facing even greater threats in the future than we are facing today. When one considers the catalogue of cuts inflicted on the Royal Navy—first, five major warships, then a sixth, then eight more and now the threat of yet another half dozen, with the incentive of the two giant carriers used to buy compliance at every stage—one sees that the feeling of betrayal at the top of the service is palpable. If, after all this pain and humiliation, one or both of the carriers fails to be ordered, that feeling of betrayal will rightly become absolute. Today we require specific answers from the Minister. When will we see the new carriers in operation? How many destroyers will we have? Will they have the ground-attack Tomahawk capability that the Navy wants? How many more ships will be mothballed? How many frigates will we have left?
	The United Kingdom has embarked under this Government on high-intensity military operations with its defence budget languishing at a lower percentage of GDP than at any time since the disastrous era between the two world wars. Typically, the Prime Minister claimed that the figure had remained constant since 1997, at about 2.5 per cent. of GDP, when he added:
	"If we add in the extra funding for Iraq and Afghanistan".
	In reality, the infrastructure and front line of the Royal Navy are being sacrificed to finance the waging of current campaigns—an act of folly for which future generations will pay.
	The current First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Jonathon Band, said recently:
	"We are at a scale of operations that requires a certain amount of investment to stay at this level. If we drop down a scale, then we may throw the baby out with the bathwater. We could turn into a Belgian navy. If we do, I'm gone".
	He would not be alone.

Adam Ingram: I beg to move, To leave out from "House" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
	"notes with approval the Government's very considerable investment in new warship building, including the new Type 45 destroyers, of which two have already been launched, the new Astute class nuclear submarines, the first of which will be launched later this year, and the two Future Aircraft Carriers, which will be the largest ships ever to serve with the Royal Navy; notes that 28 new ships have entered service with the Royal Navy since 1997; views with concern ill-informed and inaccurate suggestions that warships will be 'mothballed'; and congratulates the Government for its responsible stewardship of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines during a period of extremely high operational tempo.'.
	I am grateful to the Opposition for having raised this importance issue for defence at this time. It is just a pity we do not have an Adjournment debate on defence today, because I might have had the benefit of participating in that as well. However, this debate provides us with an opportunity to acknowledge the breadth of the Navy's contribution and to clear up some of the confusion that evidently exists about its capability.
	The contribution of the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) was a solid one, but he set some hares running that do not quite add up. He also carefully avoided the crunch question, which all Oppositions face as they scent what they believe to be power: are they going to make the spending commitments necessary to live up to their rhetoric and analysis? We wait with interest to see how that approach is going to develop over the months and years ahead.
	I note in passing that the hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) is in his place. I look forward to his contribution, if he catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker. He can tell us about the importance of the Royal Navy to Scotland—not just in Faslane and Rosyth, but elsewhere in the country—and how small that contribution would be with an independent Scottish navy.
	In his opening comments, the hon. Member for Woodspring made a lot of play of the contribution of the previous First Sea Lord, which was forceful. He argued his corner well, but in his comments he also disparaged the existing First Sea Lord.  [ Interruption. ] He made two references. The second was a quote and the first was a diminution of the role played by the existing First Sea Lord. Let me tell hon. Members—

Tobias Ellwood: rose—

Adam Ingram: No, I will not give way. Let me make my point. Let me tell hon. Members what the current First Sea Lord said on 16 February. I think that the implication was that he was forced to say what he said. That was the point that I was making when I referred to disparagement. The implication was that he was not prepared to come to his own conclusions. It is a matter of regret that that was said. It does not accord with my understanding of the integrity of Admiral Band, who said:
	"I do not think, and have not said, that the Royal Navy needs a £1 billion-a-year extra to do its job or to keep ships at sea."
	That was the charge that had been made about what he said. He went on to say:
	"Today's Royal Navy is funded to do what is asked of it—not least thanks to a current investment programme of £14 billion, and the delivery of 28 new ships in the last decade alone."

Julian Lewis: rose—

Adam Ingram: No, I will not give way, because I am conscious that we have to make progress. I will take one or two interventions later, but I am not going to be harried in the way that the hon. Gentleman quite likes. He will get the opportunity to make his point later.
	I want to make a final point about budgets. When the hon. Gentleman's party is considering what it is going to do about budgets for defence, it should bear in mind the fact that the defence budget today is 20 per cent. higher than it was in 1997, and 7.5 per cent. higher in real terms. That is a considerable investment in the military element of our overall budget approach in this country. I will deal more with that as I go on.
	A key principle of the strategic defence review was that, in reshaping our forces, we would give them a real utility for dealing with the problems of the future, and not just an appearance of strength. There were arguments in the past that said that if one ship went, one other ship should come in. That was not what the SDR was about. The issue is about meeting the evolving situation and the analysis that was laid out in the strategic defence review. That is precisely what we have done and continue to do in respect of the Royal Navy. We knew that we had moved away from the risk of large-scale maritime warfare. We believed that future tasks would require a mix of capabilities—capabilities that would enable us to conduct tasks ranging from evacuation operations through to major war fighting as part of a joint force. So it has proved to be.

James Gray: The Minister praises the strategic defence review, as do we on this side. Will he therefore endorse the strategic defence review's conclusion that we require 32 destroyers and frigates to carry out the tasks set for us?

Adam Ingram: I referred to the evolving analysis that then has to take place.  [ Interruption. ] If right hon. and hon. Members think that things stand still in defence planning and response, they will find it difficult to come to conclusions on a budget that makes any sense, because flexibility has to be included in the approach.
	During the cold war, the role of the Navy seemed clear to us all: to protect our nuclear missile submarines and to keep the north Atlantic shipping lanes open to enable the re-supply of Europe in case of a war with the Soviet Union. Our capabilities were focused on anti-submarine warfare in oceanic environments, and large numbers of frigates and destroyers, long-range patrol aircraft and attack submarines were required. We were prepared to fight a large-scale symmetrical war against an enemy with similar equipment to ours, operating in a similar manner to ours.
	That picture has changed dramatically. The Soviet Union has disappeared, and no other comparable threat has emerged to take its place, be that on land, in the air or at sea. However, as the House is very much aware, we now live in a much more unstable world. Terrorism, religious extremism, increased competition for resources, the impact of climate change and demographic shifts can lead—and have led—to crisis, confrontation and conflict. We have seen the consequence of that in recent years, be that in the Balkans, the Gulf, Afghanistan or Sierra Leone. Increasingly, we are facing asymmetric threats and our enemies are not operating with similar technologies, tactics, or constraints. That forms part of the evolving scenario that we must address. What does that mean for the Royal Navy?

Liam Fox: The Minister is quite right that the response to the end of the cold war and the diminishing Soviet threat was that which came from "Options for Change". However, the logic of that needs to be extended. If he thinks that the size of the Royal Navy should somehow reflect the size of the surface-fleet threat posed by other countries, and if Russia goes ahead with its rearmament programme and funds that through to 2015 with an increase in its surface fleet, what does he believe that the correct response should be?

Adam Ingram: The hon. Gentleman almost seems to be concluding—in part, he is totally concluding—that that would be a hostile posture. He seems to forget that at all times, through NATO and other points of contact, we try to bring Russia into some of our joint planning and joint responses. I think that the implication of what the hon. Gentleman says is that what Russia is doing—it is expanding—will be hostile, but the reality is that anything that is happening anywhere in the world could prove to be of a hostile nature, or less hostile, or even benign. These are evolving situations. We must try to plan and understand and then execute as best we can to address evolving threats. That will never be easy because of the lead times that must be adopted for any procurement stream, which has always been an ongoing consideration in defence planning and defence response.
	Over recent years, the Royal Navy has transformed itself to meet the new global challenges that we have discussed. The range of capabilities that the Royal Navy deploys meets its requirement for adaptable, resilient and battle-winning equipment that is manned by well- trained and highly motivated people. That requires an investment in new capabilities, which involve new equipment, training, and an experience of joint operations. The Government have invested heavily in new platforms for the naval service. As I pointed out when I quoted the First Sea Lord, we have introduced 28 vessels to service since 1997, which is not an inconsiderable contribution to naval strength.

Mark Francois: I declare an interest as a member of the Rayleigh branch of the Royal Naval Association. The Minister might recall that I warned in the previous Parliament against the decision to withdraw the Sea Harriers, which was touched on again today by my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood). Given that the Sea Harriers have been withdrawn, that the carriers are delayed, that the Type 45s are delayed, and that the Type 42s are being withdrawn from service, how do Ministers intend to maintain the integrity of the air defence of the fleet until the new carriers are available?

Adam Ingram: The situation has not changed since the hon. Gentleman was last given the answers to his questions. I find it interesting that people keep returning to the subject of the Sea Harriers; it is almost as if they forget or ignore the realities of the upgrade programme for those aircraft. There was no certainty that a technical solution would be found that would enable us to upgrade the aircraft in the right time scale and at the right cost. The cost was considerable—it was in the region of £500 million—and a judgment was made by the military planners.
	I distinctly remember calling in the military planners who were making the recommendation to Ministers, and they had a good knowledge of the capacity of the Sea Harriers and the need for a layered defence. I asked them whether the step that we were taking was a step too far, and their answer was no, so the military advice that I received was of a nature that allowed me to have confidence. Yes, there was a risk, and we have said that we identified that risk, but we also said that any embarked fleet would be multinational and would give us the benefit of working alongside our allies, and that there would be a period in which we built up capacity. That remains the situation. Once the Type 45 destroyers and their new equipment are introduced, they will probably be the best in the world—I would say the best in the world, in terms of their air defence capacity.

Angus Robertson: rose—

Adam Ingram: The Scottish navy is coming to the rescue.

Angus Robertson: I am grateful for the opportunity to ask the Minister a serious question about the interoperability of the maritime reconnaissance fleet, the Royal Navy and other services. This is the first opportunity that the Minister has had to update the House on the circumstances surrounding the grounding of the maritime reconnaissance fleet. Will he tell the House whether the checks on the Nimrod aircraft have been completed, and whether they are all safe to fly?

Adam Ingram: I cannot give the hon. Gentleman a precise answer, because the checks are ongoing, but I will say—he should know this, given the area that he represents—that the engineering input will be of the highest standard. The assessment of the risk presented by anything in any piece of equipment, whether for use in the air or elsewhere, has to be of the highest rigour, too. If there is cause to say that something should not be flying, sailing, or travelling on the land, the judgment will be made on a military and technical basis. The one thing that military personnel will not do is take risks with their own people, where those risks are clearly identifiable and can be dealt with. The analysis is ongoing, and it is to the credit of the RAF that it has identified the problem, acted quickly, and responded in a constructive way. We are talking about important air-maritime support equipment that is essential to what we are doing, not just in defence of our shores, but elsewhere.

John Redwood: Will the Minister tell us when the order will be placed for the two new carriers that the Navy so desperately wants?

Adam Ingram: If the right hon. Gentleman participated in defence debates more, he would understand—

Tobias Ellwood: He knows!

Adam Ingram: If I had the answer today, I would love to announce it from the Dispatch Box. We have moved through the phases of developing and maturing the procurement process for the aircraft carriers. When we get everything into the right position—that requires industry to play its part—we will make the announcement. The right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) served in Tory Governments who had disastrous procurement programmes, and we are having to resolve the problems that were caused. He should ask himself why he did not get it right when he was in government, instead of criticising us for getting it right on this occasion.

Tobias Ellwood: The Minister should not mock my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) for asking the question. We will continue to ask it, because we never get a straight answer on when the carriers will be introduced. To return to the fundamental issue of the Sea Harriers, the radar of the Type 45s will be limited to the horizon. The point of the Sea Harriers is that their radar perspective goes far beyond the horizon. By removing the Sea Harriers, we weaken the entire fleet, because we do not have the protection that is needed so vitally. There is no indication whatever that we are anywhere near procuring the joint strike fighter aircraft, let alone the carriers for which we have pressed.

Adam Ingram: I have given answer upon answer about the Sea Harriers, which had to be upgraded so that they still had their sea legs, as it were. They needed another engine, and investment was required. People forget that a big technical issue was involved that could not be easily resolved without costs or an adverse impact elsewhere on the budget. It was a military decision. I have set out the background, and the surety that I required as a Defence Minister was part of the decision-making chain and what we were doing at that point in time. We have never said that what we are doing is risk-free. That is the nature of what will happen if we embark with our own fleet in certain circumstances, but we do not envisage that happening.

Ian Davidson: As a Member from a shipbuilding constituency, I am obviously keen that the order for the carriers should be placed as soon as possible, but may I urge the Minister not to make the mistake that the previous Government made, particularly with Nimrod and Astute? The Conservatives placed orders before the projects were properly de-risked, so there was an enormous overrun in costs and time. I urge the Minister to make sure that the progress of the aircraft carrier orders is as quick as possible, commensurate with making sure that it is properly planned and scheduled before it goes through the main gate.

Adam Ingram: I can give my hon. Friend an absolute guarantee: that is precisely what we seek to do. I know that he has actively represented his constituency's interests, as it is crucial for the Clyde, and, indeed, Scotland and the United Kingdom, that those ships be delivered. They will be delivered: we remain firmly committed to the aircraft carriers, and we are working towards that conclusion.

Gary Streeter: rose—

Adam Ingram: I am going to make some progress.
	We are already in the middle of a major warship- building programme—the largest that the country has seen for many years. It will ensure that the Navy retains the cutting edge that it needs to fulfil its role, today and tomorrow, with ships that are suited to the challenges that we face. Two excellent examples are the new and highly capable amphibious assault and landing ships of the Albion and Bay classes, which provide a massive increase in amphibious lift over their predecessors, and demonstrate our commitment to providing the Navy with the appropriate tools to do its job. They improve the ability of Britain's armed forces to take action in areas easily accessible by air or where there is no friendly adjacent host nation.

Roger Gale: Will the Minister give way?

Adam Ingram: No, I am going to make progress.
	Key to the future delivery of expeditionary capability for the next 40 to 50 years is the carrier strike programme. The joint strike fighter that will operate from the two aircraft carriers will provide unrivalled ability to project enduring military capability deep inland from the safety of the sea. An important milestone was passed just before Christmas, when we signed a memorandum of understanding with the United States that sets out the framework for further design and development work on the aircraft. We continue to negotiate with the alliance before making our main investment decision on the procurement of the ships that we have been discussing. We have put those joint adaptable capabilities to excellent use. The naval service was at the forefront in the early stages of Operation Telic, when 3 Commando Brigade Royal Marines, supported by amphibious forces in the northern Gulf, led the assault on the al-Faw peninsula, thus securing access to the southern oilfields.
	Today, those same Royal Marines are engaged in difficult operations in Helmand province. They were supported until January this year by 800 Naval Air Squadron, which provided close air support in Harrier aircraft. Many more naval personnel are engaged in medical, logistics support and other vital functions at headquarters. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced earlier, we intend to deploy four more Royal Navy Sea King helicopters to Afghanistan. In Iraq, we continue to maintain a presence in the northern Gulf, which is part of the coalition effort to protect the oil terminals through which flows over 80 per cent. of Iraq's gross domestic product—foreign money that the country desperately needs to develop and flourish. We are the lead nation, too, in training the fledgling Iraqi navy to do that vital task itself.
	Further north, Sea King aircraft from 845 and 846 Naval Air Squadrons continue to provide half of the support helicopter force in Iraq. The Royal Navy regularly maintains a ship off the Horn of Africa, too, in coalition anti-terrorist operations, and a senior RN officer currently commands that joint force. The Navy is operational not just in those two theatres. It may not feature in the news regularly, but it deploys ships, aircraft and submarines all over the world in various operations. These include counter-narcotics work in the Caribbean and off west Africa. In the past 16 months, Royal Navy ships and aircraft have seized 24 tonnes of cocaine, with a street value of around £1.5 billion. At this point I should like to comment on the superb role played by the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Service in support of Royal Navy operations.

Gary Streeter: We are all very proud indeed of the performance of our Royal Navy all over the world, wherever it is. The Minister will know that in the Navy town, so to speak, of Plymouth, there is a great deal of uncertainty hanging in the air since his announcement of the naval base review. When is that review likely to be decided upon and announced? In relation to procurement, what is happening, please, about the ownership of Devonport Management Ltd? Can he say a word about that?

Adam Ingram: I intend to cover that towards the end of my remarks.
	I am setting out what our Navy does because there have been many comments implying that the Royal Navy is broken and unable to deliver. The argument was advanced by the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) when he opened the debate, and we will probably hear more in the course of the debate. I shall set out the scale, the range and the quality of what our people do in the Royal Navy.
	We maintain ships in the south Atlantic in support of our responsibilities for the Falkland Islands and other south Atlantic territories. HMS Clyde, the new Falkland Islands patrol ship, will enter service later this year. Through training and co-operation, we are helping countries in the Gulf, west Africa and the far east to build up their capacity to conduct maritime security. We are providing intelligence support to operations. Survey ships currently operate in three of the five oceans. We have recently introduced new fishery protection vessels, and of course the Royal Navy continues to provide the UK's independent nuclear deterrent, with a submarine on patrol, undetected, 365 days a year, as has been the case for the past 39 years.
	As well as these standing commitments, the Navy has demonstrated in recent years that it is more than capable of responding to humanitarian crises. The best example is last summer's operation to evacuate British and other foreign nationals from Lebanon, where Royal Navy ships led the evacuation of some 4,500 people. We were also one of the first nations to respond to the 2004 tsunami with humanitarian assistance provided by the frigate HMS Chatham and RFA Diligence. These are robust demonstrations of the Navy's global reach and flexibility.

Mike Hancock: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Adam Ingram: I want to make progress and get to the point that was raised in the previous intervention.
	It is clear, then, that the Royal Navy is vital to Britain's security, and that of the wider world. It is also clear that the service does not receive the kind of widespread recognition that it deserves. Indeed, some of the press coverage in recent months suggests that a depressing mix of cuts, redundancies and cash shortages is imminent. We are told that we are to mothball up to 50 per cent. of the Navy's surface fleet, freeze all officer promotions, and cancel orders for future warships.
	That is speculation, and we will no doubt hear more of it today. We have already had a flavour of it. None of those assertions is true. The continued peddling of misinformation does not make it any more truthful. Those who do that should pause and ask themselves what effect their naked political point scoring is having on the morale of those proudly serving in the Royal Navy, and their families.
	The truth is that 28 new ships have joined the fleet since 1997, and we are in the middle of a huge programme of investment in new capabilities. We are constantly examining our use of defence resources to ensure that they serve the interests of the nation as effectively as possible. As we underlined in our 2004 White Paper on future capabilities, defence cannot stand still. It needs continually to refine and adjust its posture to stay ahead of emerging threats, as well as to respond to today's operational challenges.
	We have several initiatives under way to ensure that we have the right balance between the differing demands on defence. I shall comment briefly on those. First, we are conducting a routine update of our defence spending plans to ensure that resources are directed to where our front-line forces need them most. That is what Governments should do, and do properly.
	Secondly, we are reviewing our naval base infrastructure to ensure that it is the right size to support the Navy's and the country's needs in the future. I acknowledge the contribution made by each of the naval bases to the security of the country and to the local economy, wherever they are. It will be important for the review to explore how best to preserve these capabilities in the future.
	Both Portsmouth and Devonport have put together a powerful taskforce from their local communities to argue the case. All those arguments will be taken into account as we assess what we need to do to ensure we give—

Linda Gilroy: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Adam Ingram: I will give way to my hon. Friend in a moment. I suspect that it will not be a friendly intervention, from the forceful way in which she rose, like an Exocet missile coming at me.
	We are embarked upon examining how we will get best use from our existing resources. I do not believe for one moment that any right hon. or hon. Member thinks that we should spend our money unwisely in support of the front line. That means we must conduct a review and reach proper conclusions.

Linda Gilroy: I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way. I wanted to speak about projecting expeditionary force and say to Opposition Members that if they wanted to see the modern and the future Navy, they could come to no better place than Plymouth, where HMS Albion, Bulwark and Ocean and the associated landing craft constitute that future projecting expeditionary force. Does my right hon. Friend agree?

Adam Ingram: I certainly agree that a visit by hon. Members would be worth while. Assuming that the ships are not at sea, they would see considerable assets. I have no doubt that if hon. Members visited Faslane, they would see a considerable support base there, and if they visited Portsmouth, they would see something similar. All those characteristics are clearly in place, but we must look at the future shape, structure and needs of the Royal Navy. That also applies to what we are doing in the RAF. We must examine the number of air bases that we have and where barracks are, how we can create super-garrisons and how we can, hopefully, return personnel from Germany. We are in a period of major change which will, I believe, be for the better.

Mike Hancock: I would be grateful if the Minister could give some indication to people in Portsmouth, Devonport and Faslane of when the naval base review will be determined and when he would expect to make a statement. Do he and the Ministry of Defence stick by the statement made by the Secretary of State in Portsmouth eight weeks ago that there would be no reduction—the Navy would not be reduced by six ships? He gave a firm commitment about that. Is that still the case?

Adam Ingram: I suspect that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said a lot more than just that one statement— [Interruption.] I do not think he just said that. I think it was part of a much wider contribution about the way in which we view— [Interruption.] If the hon. Gentleman asks a question, he should allow me to answer it instead of heckling and trying to shout me down. I did not do that to him.
	I pointed out that we are examining what our current needs are and what our future needs will be. That is the purpose of the naval base review. The Secretary of State is wholly committed to that. We are in the process of maturing our thinking about the matter. Like any other decision, we will announce it when we are ready to do so, not before. I guess that if we announce any change, people will say, "Don't let it affect me. Don't do it to me." We will need an extensive process of consultation and discussion to take any argument forward, because we must make sure that we are right in what we are doing, and those who advance any criticism are wrong. That assumes that there will be a change. We will have to wait and see what comes out of the review.

Ian Davidson: When the Minister takes into account the degree of risk and uncertainty for the United Kingdom's naval bases, will he take into account the danger that the United Kingdom might become disunited? What does he believe the impact will be on the future of, for example, Faslane and the other naval, Army and Air Force bases in Scotland? Does he believe there is a real danger that they will close?

Adam Ingram: I do not believe that there is a real danger that they will close, because those who advocate the break-up of the United Kingdom will not prevail. As I said earlier, the hon. Member for Moray is in his place, and he can give us his analysis of how big the Scottish Navy would be and what the impact would be if I am proved wrong. In terms of planning future structure, we have to have a side eye on what is going on, but we believe in the United Kingdom and that the people of the United Kingdom want to retain the Union. Those who want to break it up and separate are a minority.
	My third point is that the Commander-in-Chief, Fleet is carefully examining the balance between the requirements of the front line and the size of the support element that enables the successful delivery of that fighting power. The process of transformation is ongoing and will ensure that we maximise the Navy's front-line capability while reducing unnecessary overheads.
	I have discussed the uncertainty that that process brings, but I ask the House to take morale into account and not to run away with press speculation or even to help to create some of that speculation. I ask hon. Members to ask us for the facts, because we will always seek to give our best analysis and information, within the limits of maintaining operational security.
	On 12 February, I wrote to the hon. Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis), who—I am told—does wonderful research work for his Front-Bench colleagues. The letter was a detailed response to rebut all the arguments about the mothballing equation and the state of readiness of the Royal Navy fleet. It was a three-page letter, and I have placed a copy in the Library. I recommend that right hon. and hon. Members read that letter.
	In conclusion, I firmly believe that the Royal Navy has a crucial role to play in acting as a force for good in today's world. We are determined that it should be adequately resourced and equipped to carry out that mission. I can assure the House that the current tempo of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan does not mean that the Navy is the poor relation of the other services. The sea remains the indispensable medium for trade and access to areas of strategic interest. It is crucial to our economic vitality and our ability to protect our country and our friends. There is, therefore, absolutely no doubt that the Royal Navy will continue to form a fundamental part of Britain's defence, and we will enable that with the introduction of more capable ships and submarines.
	The subject of this debate is the state of the Royal Navy. My belief is that the state of the Royal Navy is this: it is a world class Navy, ready to fight and win, modern, relevant, capable and resilient. This Government will continue to ensure that that remains the case.

Nick Harvey: I welcome the opportunity that today's debate affords us to consider the state and the future of the Royal Navy, and I begin by paying tribute to the bravery, skill and professionalism of the men and women who serve the Royal Navy in its valued work around the world. We are an island nation, dependent on maritime capabilities, and the Navy has proven to be a decisive force throughout its history. It is rightly held in high regard worldwide.
	The role of the Navy has evolved a great deal, and its evolution continues at a striking pace even today. How the threats to which it responds have developed, and continue to develop, will determine the shape, the scale and the size of the Navy that we need.
	The hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) quoted at considerable length comments by the current and previous First Sea Lords and it is understandable that the Royal Navy has anxieties, especially with the impending comprehensive spending review. In the Government's amendment to today's motion, they are quick to congratulate themselves on their naval policy despite continued strains on the navy. I believe that there are still critical pinch points in manning, recruitment and retention, the increasing cost of existing procurements, and the Government's vagueness about future procurements. We have not heard much more about the latter today. Today's motion highlights some key issues on which we need clarification, and I hope that the Minister will soon be able to tell us about the conclusions of the naval base review and its implications.
	The motion is useful in that it attempts to ascertain whether the Government intend to sustain a Navy of approximately the current size and scope. I would not necessarily commit myself as strongly as the motion does to the Navy continuing in its exact permutation, but the Conservatives are right to put down a marker to try to stop the Government reducing the size of the Navy by stealth. Alarm bells have rung in that regard recently.

Ian Davidson: If the Liberal Democrats will not commit to the present allocation of resources, can the hon. Gentleman tell us exactly what cuts in the Navy they would make? Do they still adhere to the policy of Lord Garden that the aircraft carriers should be built in the United States?

Nick Harvey: Lord Garden said no such thing, as the hon. Gentleman well knows. I thought that I had set out in terms that the scale of naval operations should remain at their present level. I am not advancing an increase for the Navy, but I wish to stress the importance of sustaining it at least at its current size.
	The strategic defence review of 1998 outlined the future of the armed forces and said that it should be governed by the principles of interoperability, co-operation, deployability, sustainability and cost-effectiveness in meeting a wide range of capabilities. Those principles should and must continue to apply to the Navy today. We cannot predict the exact type and scale of conflicts in which we may need to engage, or the threats and circumstances to which we might need to respond, but we need to be sure that our Navy is a flexible, versatile and effective force.
	In recent years, the armed forces have been involved in a high level of operational demand, with involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in UN and NATO-led missions. Those are likely to continue into the foreseeable future. In January, the Prime Minister stated in his speech in Plymouth that we are a nation that does both "war fighting and peacekeeping", and we must be sure that our capabilities match our modern-day expectations and demands, and continue to do so into the future. We must ensure that our forces are prepared for rapid deployment and long-term operational support, for joint operations as part of NATO or the UN, and for the delivery of aid and humanitarian support in times of crisis.
	The Government often talk of the threats posed by terrorism and responding to them. However, they do not tell us exactly how our armed forces will be used in that fight or in the many other missions around the world that equally need our attention, support, resources and manpower. We must assess those multiple needs, but in his speech in January the Prime Minister did not give a clear indication of how he envisages the future of the Royal Navy or how he intends it to meet the new threats and requirements. That was ironic, given that he was on board a naval vessel in Plymouth. The Government need to give a clearer indication of how our commitments will change in the future and what changes will therefore be needed in the shape of the Royal Navy.

Angus Robertson: On the question of commitments, perhaps we could have some clarity from the Liberal Democrats. At the weekend, we had a demonstration in Scotland against the new generation of Trident weapons. The head of the Church of Scotland said that they were "morally and theologically wrong". Cardinal Keith O'Brien said that they were "immoral". A poll also revealed that 81 per cent. of Liberal Democrats would rather have the cost of Trident spent elsewhere. Is that the position of the Liberal Democrat party or will it continue to ride roughshod over the wishes of its voters and majority opinion in Scotland?

Nick Harvey: The opinion of the Liberal Democrats remains that Britain's minimum nuclear deterrent should be sustained for the foreseeable future. We hope very much that in the future, circumstances will be created in which it can safely be decommissioned, but those circumstances do not exist at the moment. That is the policy that we will continue to pursue. We do not believe that the decision to renew the submarine fleet is necessary at the moment, but we remain committed to the principle of the minimum nuclear deterrent.
	As I said, the Government have not given a clear indication of how they think that the Navy needs to reshape itself in the future. The Navy's slogan is "A world class Navy, ready to fight and win", and we must ensure that we have a Navy capable of fulfilling that. We must ensure that it is efficient, cost-effective, versatile and as powerful as possible within the limits that we can afford.
	As a result of withdrawing certain elements of the fleet, the number of standing tasks we can perform will be reduced and we must debate whether that is in the national interest and its implications for the delivery of hard and soft forms of naval power. References to hard and soft power imply the ability to assist in peacekeeping initiatives and humanitarian interventions, such as those we saw in Sri Lanka following the tsunami, as well as the continued campaigns of hard force that we have seen in other parts of the world.
	When we talk about hard conflict, we notice that the pattern of military engagement in recent years has shifted towards land and air-based conflict. Much less of that hard conflict currently takes place at sea. However, the Navy continues with crucial roles in patrolling our territorial waters, monitoring potential threats, contributing to our military presence in overseas territories, and furthering our national interests.

Lindsay Hoyle: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it would make more sense to ensure that Caribbean guard ships are there for 12 months of the year, not just six months, in order to stop the drug-running that takes place?

Nick Harvey: The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. The reach of the Royal Navy and the work that it is doing in different parts of the world is certainly very serious, and we must sustain it as much as we can. There is also the question of the protection of shipping, which remains one of the Navy's important roles to this day.
	The time is coming when we need to take another look and make a fresh strategic assessment of the demands the Navy must meet in various competing roles, as well as considering what military equipment and vessels are required to perform such functions efficiently and cost-effectively. The motion before us specifies that we must stick with the current 30 frigates and destroyers, and although I do not discredit that figure in any sense, it may well be that, because of the variety of our different needs, we have to consider whether that represents exactly the right way of going about things, or whether there are better ways of using resources. If the Government are going to make cuts in the number of vessels, they have to be clear about which commitments will be cut accordingly, and the impact that that will have on our armed forces and our national interest at home and abroad.

Paul Keetch: My hon. Friend is making a very thoughtful speech. In relation to what he said about a review of naval capabilities, does he envisage that we should take a careful look at the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Service, not only because an enormous shipbuilding programme is coming up—sadly, the hon. Member for Glasgow, South-West (Mr. Davidson) is not in his place so he cannot listen to this—but because other navies have successfully used merchantmen for refuelling duties at sea, including the United States navy. In that way, the Royal Navy could get more bang for its buck out of its auxiliary services.

Nick Harvey: My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. He is right; there is a huge procurement pending, and if we were to take the sort of strategic look at the Navy that I describe, all things should be counted in the equation. At present, our Navy still maintains significant anti-submarine warfare capabilities, for example. The submarine threats that we now face are minimal, and we have to ask ourselves whether that needs to be as great a priority as it has been. We still have 20 frigates and 12 Merlin anti-submarine helicopters. As we have moved more towards land and air-based conflict, one wonders whether that is the right combination of capabilities to keep.
	As we consider the shape of the Navy in the 21st century, we note the two new aircraft carriers, about which many hon. Members have spoken today. We must ask by what means exactly we will be able to defend those when they come into active service. The three small carriers that we have currently have played a crucial role and the Government have again not been able to say when we can expect any news about the two full-scale carriers that are so badly needed, and were committed to coming into service in 2012 and 2015. I hope that the Government will come to the House soon and tell us when there will be some progress on that. I hope that they will take on board the wise words of the Select Committee on Defence and ensure that the responsibilities for the various stages and elements of the programme are clearly defined and allocated. We need a clear idea, available publicly, of when the carriers and the joint strike fighters, or whatever else will fly off them, will come into service.
	As the Government point out in their amendment to the motion, the new Type 45 destroyers and the new Astute class submarines are on their way shortly. However, as the Defence Committee also points out, the Defence Procurement Agency faces increasing costs for both those programmes. What steps do the Government think they can take to contain the cost of those programmes? What do they believe the impact of those costs running higher and higher will be on their naval expenditure?
	Naval capability is completely redundant without the men and women of the Royal Navy—operational, administrative and technical. The future of the Navy is reliant on a strong, highly skilled, well-maintained and positive work force. There are issues of morale, as other Members have said. In their amendment, the Government congratulate themselves on their
	"responsible stewardship of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines during a period of extremely high operational tempo."
	However, as the National Audit Office report of 2005-06 highlights, there is a
	"gap in the required experience profile across the Royal Navy".
	In effect that is a "black hole" that will have repercussions for as much as another 20 years, in addition to the reductions in Royal Navy manpower that will take place by April 2008, which was also commented upon by the Defence Committee. There is a distinct and severe lack in specialist trades, which must be addressed as a matter of urgency. With the development of new Astute class submarines and proposals to renew Vanguard, it is alarming that there are key pinch points affecting nuclear watchkeepers.
	Additionally, it is reported that the Marines are undermanned according to requirements for the past 10 years, despite this "responsible stewardship". I welcome the idea of a 7 per cent. increase in the requirement for Marines; retention will be just as important as recruitment because they are currently doing excellent work for us in Afghanistan, for example. Those manning shortfalls will be difficult to recover, and I hope that the Government will address the matter head on. I would welcome news from them on when the Armed Forces Pay Review Body report can be expected. It is rather late, and its findings will be absolutely vital to sustaining morale.
	In conclusion, the Navy is approaching a crucial decision point. One might not want to talk about a crossroads in the naval context, but some vital decisions are clearly pending. Today's debate has been a useful start to addressing such issues, but there is clearly more to debate, and I look forward to the Government returning to the House with more detailed proposals soon.

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I remind all hon. Members that Mr. Speaker has imposed an eight-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches, but in view of the limited time available for the debate, Members may wish to reduce their contributions even further.

Doug Henderson: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker; I shall try to curtail my remarks as far as possible.
	I am one of the Members on the Government side of the House who still remembers what it was like to be on the Opposition side. I hope that that will remain a memory for even longer. It is always difficult for the Opposition to decide what to choose to debate on an Opposition day. They know that there is a risk that if they try to take on something that is very topical politically in order to undermine what the Government are doing, it can bounce back on to them. The second motive for choosing a subject for debate is to open up an issue so that the House can discuss something that it would not otherwise discuss. I have to say to the hon. Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis) and the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox), who has left the Chamber, that if the motive were the first one—to try and catch the Government to make a political point—the Opposition have chosen very dangerous territory. On the motion before us, they have been very specific about the points where they believe that the Government have slipped up. The corollary is that the Opposition would not have slipped up and that they would have implemented the full details of the strategic defence review, as outlined in the document.
	If the Opposition take that view, they cannot avoid the question that I put to the hon. Member for Woodspring. If, given the changing situation in the world and changing defence needs as we evolve from our position in 1998—as was mentioned from the Government Front Bench earlier—the Opposition are saying that those commitments should still be implemented, they have to say where the money is coming from. Is it coming from another part of the defence budget and, if so, let us find out where, so that constituency Members will be aware of it. If that is not the position and if other commitments stand as well as these, notwithstanding the evolving situation, the only presumption is that the expenditure has to come from other public sector areas. If that is the case, the country should know where the Conservatives say that other cuts in social services, health, education or whatever will fall, or are we to have increased taxation or greater public borrowing in order to pay for it?
	That is the first pathway that the Opposition could choose. I rather hope that they are not going down that pathway and that they are raising this subject in order to stimulate a wider debate. If it is the second motive—stimulating debate—I could not agree with them more. It is courageous to stimulate a debate on such a difficult area, in view of all the dilemmas that the Government have to face. If that is the Opposition's motive, I congratulate them.
	The Opposition will have to recognise what the Government recognise—that there are no straightforward solutions. It is not a matter of having every aeroplane, every missile, every ship, higher wages, better guns, better equipment and so forth. That is not how the defence budget works: choices have to be made; there have to be priorities. In the case of the health service, it is much easier to predict what the demands will be next year or in three or five years' time, though technological changes affect it dramatically. It is so much more difficult to predict what will be needed in defence in order to protect our country, because we cannot see over the horizon. We do not know what is around the corner. We can make some intelligent guesses—the Government have made some good ones in the implementation of the strategic defence review—but we do not know the nature of the enemy. We do not know whether it is symmetric or asymmetric. If it is symmetric, we do not know whether someone else will fulfil the role that the Soviet Union played in the past or whether there will be dangers from China, India, a new Russia or wherever. We do not know the answer. We do not know whether there is going to be a new conflagration of asymmetric enemies, but we suspect that there might well be.
	The difficulty with defence procurement is that we cannot take a decision today, go to Tesco tomorrow and have it in by Wednesday. It takes many years of planning and assessment of technological efficiency or the efficacy of any weaponry that is purchased. It often takes many years of build and testing before it becomes operational. Therefore a degree of intelligent guesswork about the future is always necessary. If the Opposition are recognising that fact in stimulating this debate, I think that they are doing Parliament and the British people a service. The British people closely watch what happens with our defence budgets and our foreign policies.
	I have only a couple of minutes left, and I am sorry to say that I shall have to take the full time available. There are some things that we do know. We know that we need an expeditionary force—I do not believe that anyone would disagree with that—and we know that we need fighting ground troops in order to carry out the tasks necessary for our commitment to NATO. We know about the need for airlift following expeditionary forces and for sealift as well. What we do not know is answers to questions about the enemy, the timing, the symmetric or the asymmetric.
	I want to make the point that we do not know about technological developments either. That is why I am in favour of a Trident replacement. I think that we need an ultimate deterrent and that the Navy plays a crucial role in that. We do not know tomorrow's enemy and we do not know the mass destructive technology of tomorrow. Because of that, we have to keep the best defence that we can against anyone posing a potential threat to us or our friends. I think that that argument, particularly the crucial contribution of the Navy, has to be made more forcefully in defence.
	It seems that I do not need my full eight minutes after all, Madam Deputy Speaker. I think that we need a balance and that the Government are striking it. Speaking as a north-east MP, I want to see early implementation of the carriers as part of the balance, because there is a potential for work in our area in pursuit of that very important goal of sealift.
	I forgot one important point. It is not just a matter of airlift and sealift, but of the protection of airlift and sealift. That has a crucial part to play as well. I commend the Opposition on—hopefully—raising this motion to stimulate debate. I believe that the Government have responded seriously to the points that have been made. We look forward to hearing their further responses on issues such as the carriers and the defence aircraft necessary to protect them.

Peter Viggers: I respect the record of interest and involvement in this area on the part of the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Mr. Henderson), but he could not deny, on reflection, that there is a problem, in that the strategic defence review of 1998 predicated 32 surface ships in relation to two large aircraft carriers, but those are not now expected to be part of the overall plan.
	We are a trading nation; we export more than a third of our gross domestic product—far more than any other industrialised nation. We have our Commonwealth links, which involve us in the West Indies and elsewhere, and we also have an interest in the middle east. We have old friendships such as that with Brunei, which means that we have a keen interest in safety in the South China sea, the Malacca straits and other areas. We cannot get out of that involvement: those areas are important to us, and the Royal Navy is an important part of our overall defence posture.
	The word "deterrence" relates not just to nuclear deterrence but to the availability of surface ships and the visibility of the Royal Navy throughout the world, where appropriate. That is why surface ships and their numbers are so very important. What nobody has mentioned so far in the debate is that it has been a given over the decades that of all surface ships at any one time, about one third will be in work-up, about one third in refit and only about one third available for deployment. That is not me complaining about the availability of ships; I am simply recognising a fact. One could take any number of surface destroyers and frigates and divide it by three, and that would be the number of ships available. If 32 ships are available, 10 might be available for immediate deployment; 25 might mean about eight; and if the numbers reduce to about 19, seven or even six destroyers and frigates might be available for deployment at any one time.
	We then need to add to that equation the fact that we are theoretically—and, I hope, in practice—going to purchase two extremely large aircraft carriers. Given that steel is cheap and air is free, why not have very large aircraft carriers? They will be the largest ships ever to have served in the Royal Navy, but when they deploy as part of a task group, they will require surface ships to back them up. The number of such ships required depends on where the aircraft carriers are deployed. If they are deployed very close to the UK or in the Mediterranean, the number of surface ships deployed with them might be two or three. If they are deployed further away—on far eastern station, for instance—they would need something like five surface ships accompanying them, which is a very high proportion of the available ships; it would take up most of them. We need to ask what else would then be available for deployment in the south Atlantic, the West Indies, the Mediterranean and the far east, and for good will-visits? The answer, really, is none. I put it to the Government that their procurement programme is getting out of kilter.
	I also question the size of the aircraft carriers. It is of course an attractive concept to have very large aircraft carriers, as they are flexible in the type of aircraft that can be deployed from them, but if a ship is to be deployed with joint strike fighters of the short take-off and vertical landing—STOVL—variety, why would such large ships be necessary? Given the shortage of surface ships and the nature of the aircraft that are intended to be deployed from the aircraft carriers, it seems that we are heading into uncharted waters and, perhaps, an unbalanced procurement programme.
	In the light of the shortage of money available for surface ships—and the reduction in the number of surface ships—admirals and those advising them will inevitably look at the shore establishments. Rosyth has its own reasons for being protected, but let us consider Faslane, Plymouth and Portsmouth. Sixty per cent. of all ships are based in Portsmouth, and much of the training takes place in the Portsmouth and Gosport area. The heart of the Royal Navy is in south Hampshire.
	If many of those ships were removed from Portsmouth, sailors would be taken away from south Hampshire, where most of them have made their homes. If, in addition, engineering and other training were moved from the south Hampshire area to St. Athan, as is planned after 2011, the Government would be tearing the heart out of the Royal Navy. They would not only weaken the deployability of the ships, but put domestic pressure on sailors who are based in south Hampshire, near where their ships and training are currently based. In this difficult world, in which sailors are frequently parted from their families for long periods, the least that the Government can do is to try to diminish those periods of separation.
	I submit that the worst step that the Government could take would be to switch training to south Wales, resulting in sailors spending much of their time away from home, and to switch their ships away from Portsmouth, resulting in their having to make long journeys back to their homes in south Hampshire when their ships were based in this country. Some 35,000 jobs in the Portsmouth area are defence related, comprising 13,300 service jobs and 21,600 civilian jobs. Quite apart from that, I submit that the course that the Government are taking on procurement and on changes in defence training will tear the heart out of the Royal Navy, and I urge them to think again about these issues.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. I am conscious of the limited time available, so I shall concentrate on the naval base review, which has great significance for my constituency. Last year, Labour's defence budget reached £30 billion for the first time ever. That is a vast amount of money, and if we are asking the British taxpayer for such a sum, it is important that we spend it wisely. More importantly, servicemen and women are risking their lives on operations, so it is vital that maximum resources should be spent on the front line.
	That means that we cannot do things in the way that we have always done them; we have to change. Change brings uncertainty, not least in Portsmouth, and the uncertainty that has faced us since the naval base review has been overwhelming. There are about 10 options in the review, two of which have had the unfortunate effect of pitting one naval base against another. I should like to put it on the record that, in Portsmouth, we are making our case based on our own competences. I believe that there are strategic and financial cases for all three bases to stay open. Although I regret the uncertainty, the review has enabled us in Portsmouth to demonstrate how we are evolving to meet today's and future naval requirements in a cost-effective way.
	The hon. Member for Gosport (Peter Viggers) has just spoken about the number of jobs that are dependent on the Portsmouth naval base area. Ten per cent. of the residents of Portsmouth are in what are known as defence-dependent jobs; 15 per cent. of the residents of the hon. Gentleman's constituency are in such jobs, as are 8 per cent. of the residents of Fareham. The naval base generates an income of £680 million for the local economy, and a recent report by Portsmouth university estimated that if the base closed there would be a loss of £350 million in the sub-regional economy. Although that is important, I would be the last person to say that we should make local economics the basis of our defence expenditure decisions. However, we must maintain our skills base in different geographical locations, in order properly to support our front-line forces and protect our national interest and national security.
	That is why the defence industrial strategy that was published last year looked to industry to adopt a partnership approach with the Ministry of Defence rather than the traditional contractor-supplier approach. In Portsmouth, we have taken that into account and embraced it wholeheartedly. We have a unique partnership with industry in Portsmouth, principally with VT Shipbuilding and BAE Systems. We provide a one-stop shop for shipbuilding and ship support—from design, build and launch through upgrade to eventual disposal—all on one site.
	There are overwhelming financial and militarily strategic reasons for keeping Portsmouth naval base open. Our naval base is not just about berthing ships; there are myriad ancillary services in and around it. The cost of moving all those services alone would be prohibitive, but if we also take into account our industrial partnerships, the case for keeping Portsmouth open becomes overwhelming.
	Our industrial base includes all the major players in the defence industry, and many of the other smaller suppliers in the defence sector. Having that huge range of naval, MOD and industrial organisations co-located in one place means that the MOD has all its key strategic capabilities together. Our unique culture of partnering and MOD-industry collaboration is already driving down costs within the Ministry: £50 million-worth of savings have already been delivered, and another £30 million have been identified.
	Last December, BAE Systems and VT Shipbuilding started discussions with a view to forming a single joint-venture company. That would place all the UK's industrial shipbuilding and support expertise in one organisation, which would result in the potential for substantial cost reductions for the MOD. Linked with that proposal is the establishment of Portsmouth as a centre of excellence. If the naval base were to close and the ships were to move away, the whole venture would be in jeopardy. All the synergies that would be achieved by having a centre of excellence in one place would be fragmented, resulting in much higher costs to the taxpayer. My fear is that that could prevent us from giving the Navy the resources that it needs to be a global force in the future.
	The case for keeping Portsmouth naval base open is not only financial. There is also a militarily strategic case for doing so, not least because two studies have suggested that it is the only place to base-port the aircraft carriers. We have made a significant investment—£40 million—on new jetties. The only other possible place for the aircraft carriers to go is Faslane, but it does not have the infrastructure to support them: its jetties are only 15 m long. So that investment would have to be duplicated in order to accommodate the carriers there. There must also be a question mark over whether we would want to put all our major strategic naval assets in one place.
	I believe that we need all three naval bases as strategic assets in an uncertain world. We can all make substantial cost reductions while keeping all three bases open. This does not have to be a beauty contest between Devonport, Portsmouth and Faslane. It would be pointless to prop up one naval base for economic reasons at the expense of destroying the local economy of another. We can all work together with our industrial partners to make all three bases cost-effective and to deliver proper support to our ships in the front line. I regret the uncertainty that the review has caused to my constituents, and I hope that we shall have a speedy decision. I am hopeful, however, that the outcome will be a strengthening of all three of our naval bases, delivering cost-effective and battle-effective support, and maximising the specialist capabilities of each base to enable a modern, flexible and efficient Royal Navy to fulfil its global role and reinforce Britain's position as a force for good in an uncertain world.

Mike Hancock: I am fortunate to follow the hon. Member for Portsmouth, North (Sarah McCarthy-Fry) and, for that matter, the hon. Member for Gosport (Peter Viggers), because they both spelled out clearly the importance of the naval base review. I am encouraged by the fact that the Minister, in answer to my intervention, gave the commitment that the options would be inspected thoroughly and in detail.
	I welcome in particular the opportunity that Portsmouth has been given and share the sentiments expressed by the hon. Lady about the fact that Portsmouth has tried to defend the Royal Navy and Portsmouth's part in it. We have not tried to paint the picture that it has to be Portsmouth at any price. We understand the importance to the Royal Navy of its having the flexibility provided by those three ports. That is why the argument has always rested on three bases being available for the Royal Navy.
	No one can deny that there will be changes. There is ready acceptance among the work force, the community and everyone that in a changing world there will undoubtedly be changes. Those of us who have lived with this issue since childhood and under successive Governments know of such changes only too well. When I was a child, there were 48,000 people working in the dockyard. Substantial reductions over the past 40 years have reduced that figure considerably, but the effectiveness of the Royal Navy is what is important.
	I share the admiration and pride with which the Minister spoke of the global commitments of the Royal Navy, whether it be in tsunami rescues, combating the drug trade or supporting ground forces. It plays a vital role. I also agree with the point made by the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Mr. Henderson) about the importance of the debate: it is a shame that it is so short, because the Navy has traditionally played a crucial role in the defence of this country. We must recognise the fact that, if we are to ask the men and women of the Navy and the Royal Marines who serve this country to carry out increasingly more difficult tasks, we must ensure that the right support is there for them and their families when we send them off on our behalf.
	It is right to ensure that our service personnel have the right equipment, and Members of the House are correct to question the Government about timing in relation to the aircraft carriers. Is there a question of money? Is the gap between what industry is demanding and what the Ministry of Defence will pay so wide? Is it right to dismiss the question posed by the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox), who asked why it is not possible to have Tomahawk missiles on Type 45s? Why was that decision taken when, manifestly, they were something that the Navy wanted? Why are we not getting an answer?
	In an intervention, I asked the Minister of State whether he would, today, recommit the MOD to the point that the Secretary of State made in Portsmouth. He was asked a simple question: is it true that there are MOD plans to take six more ships out of service? He gave a categorical answer, just to that one question. He said no. He also said, "I've just come hotfoot from the commander-in-chief and the commander-in-chief is saying no." We are entitled to know, as this thing moves on, whether that is still the position. That is the simple question that I asked and it is the simple question that was posed to the Secretary of State. The House is entitled to know that number.
	The hon. Member for Portsmouth, North talked about the importance of jobs in the naval base and the effect on the community in south Hampshire. No one can undermine that importance. Any threat will obviously be extraordinarily worrying to the community that we represent, but the case is well made why we need and should have the support of the MOD in retaining the naval bases at Portsmouth and at Devonport. There is an obvious connection with Faslane. I am sure that, as far as the whole House is concerned, there is no alternative to Faslane as long as Scotland stays in the United Kingdom, which will be for ever. I see no one seriously threatening the existence of the Faslane base.

Adam Ingram: He does.

Mike Hancock: From a sedentary position, the Minister suggests that the hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) and the Scots Nats might be implying that, but that is an argument for another day when we have more time.
	We need an answer on lots of issues involving the Navy. Three different terms—reduced readiness, extended readiness and, now, low readiness—are used and it is difficult to find out which ships are in which category. Parliamentary questions are not a good way of trying to elicit an answer. I am sure that the hon. Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis) will elaborate on the response that he got from the Minister, and I would be interested to know whether that is one of the questions that he answered. The same applies to the air arm of the Royal Navy. Of the 65 Lynx Mk 3 and Lynx Mk 8 helicopters in service, 21 are undergoing repair. Of the remaining 44, only 13 of the 23 Mk 3s and 12 of the Mk 8s are fit for purpose. That means that there are 19 whose state we do not know. Possibly they have been cannibalised, as ships have been cannibalised.
	The situation is the same for Merlin Mk 1s. There are 38 in service with 11 undergoing repair. Of the 27 remaining, only 13 are fit for purpose. Are we not entitled to know why that situation prevails and why we have to cannibalise in such large numbers to make aircraft fit for purpose in the Royal Navy? Why are so many ships stripped down simply to maintain the seagoing capacity of a reduced number of ships? That cannot be proper foresight and planning for the Royal Navy of today.
	We hear repeatedly about increased capabilities on ships. No one who has been to the new shipbuilding yard at Portsmouth naval base can fail to be full of admiration and pride on seeing the front ends of four Type 45s being built alongside each other—it is a magnificent sight, but we are told that we cannot be sure that we will get past six ships. We cannot be sure of the cost of the seventh and eighth boats, as we cannot be sure of the cost of the two Astute boats, Nos. 2 and 3. We have no agreed price for them. What is that doing to the Royal Navy's morale? As we cannot get agreement on the cost of those ships, does that mean that we are not going to get them? Who is going to pay? Will it be the existing surface fleet? Will there be a reduction in the Royal Navy's capability?
	A ship can be very effective, but, as the hon. Member for Woodspring said in opening the debate, ships can be in only one place at one time. Unless they have, for example, a sea-based Tomahawk cruise missile on board, their range and effectiveness are greatly reduced. I hope that the Minister will say where we are going on some of those crucial issues, on which I believe the House is entitled to an answer.

Alison Seabeck: As a Member representing a seat containing the largest naval base in western Europe, I have taken a close interest in the debate. I shall touch on elements of the Opposition's motion, as well as concerns raised elsewhere, and avoid turning the debate into one based solely on the naval base review and the so-called beauty contest between Portsmouth and Plymouth.
	In recent weeks, the media have run comments—no doubt some Opposition Members might want to repeat them—made by a forthright, provocative and, at times, mischievous First Sea Lord, Sir Jonathon Band. However, had hon. Members been with me, and my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, North (Sarah McCarthy-Fry), last week when we listened to him as members of the naval part of the parliamentary armed forces scheme, they would have heard him get very serious. He made clear the position that he has absolute confidence that the Navy can do all that is being asked of it at present, not least because of the ongoing investment and the delivery of 28 ships in the past decade alone. Believe me, the First Sea Lord is not a man who bows to pressure from anybody. That assessment of him, which was made from the Opposition Benches, is quite wrong.
	We are seeing the most significant shipbuilding programme in modern times, although that fact tends to be obscured by a smokescreen put up by the media. The comprehensive spending review is coming up and a number of the stories that have been circulating about cuts are misleading at best. There is no doubt that whenever budgets are being considered either nationally or locally, Departments start to leak. They leak from within, and separate directorates also start to leak. They are all competing for money and are all determined to wind up the stakeholders; the politicians, who see a good story and an excuse to attack the Opposition, whatever their political colour; and the public, who believe that severe and arbitrary cuts to services are imminent.
	It is important, however, to separate the rumour mill from the serious need to reassess, in a changing world and in the light of advances in design and build, the strategic requirements of our armed services. Of course each branch of our armed services wants more money to spend—who would not?—but we need to take care that the money provided does not disappear into a black hole and that we avoid serious duplication and inefficiencies.
	The 2003 defence White Paper marked a change in approach on defence spending. Now, with the marine industrial strategy and the defence industrial strategy—the DIS—we are moving towards a crucial point. The decision on the aircraft carriers is clearly part of that process, as is the review of naval bases.
	The DIS called for a wholesale transformation of the UK's naval industrial base. It set out a broad template for the consolidation and restructuring of the industry to focus on the long-term capability management of in-service assets. The Minister Lord Drayson has persevered; to his credit, he is making progress, despite the great scepticism about whether he would be able to bring the big industrial players on side. In part, he has managed that by using as a lever what was on offer under the future carrier programme, for the CVF. It is an interesting strategy, but it may in part explain why the CVF has not yet been brought forward. In fact, the Minister could not have been clearer when in January this year, he said in a  Jane's publication:
	"I tried to be as clear as I could to the industry that we really needed to see this consolidation take place before we were in a position to go forward with projects like the carrier."
	Clearly, the carriers are important, but something much more important is at stake: the future of UK defence industries plc. We need to get the balance right between the fleet's needs and the certainty of orders, to protect the Navy's requirements as well as the skills base required in the industry. A regular order book makes much more sense than the peaks and troughs that we currently see. There is evidence that the industry is responding positively and beginning to understand that there could be long-term gains and profits for it if it works with the MOD.
	There has been enormous investment in the Royal Navy, and that has been entirely right. We are seeing its first fruits—ships and vehicles. The Navy can expect a further £14 billion to be spent in the next 10 to 15 years, and that is unprecedented. The money is to be spent on upgrading the destroyers with the new Type 45s, on new attack submarines and, of course, on the new aircraft carriers.
	That is an impressive programme, but the Navy has its part to play and has to be more efficient. The current naval base review affects Plymouth, and we are making the strongest possible case for the retention of its base, because we know that we can help the MOD and the Navy meet its future needs.
	The Opposition want the outcome to the review urgently, but speed is not the answer. I want a thorough review of the evidence and an understanding of the implications for Plymouth and the wider south-west, rather than a rushed decision. Plymouth's case for an ongoing role is powerful. I believe that, viewed on the basis of the criteria applied across the other bases, the Navy has a long-term future in Devonport. Such a level playing field is important if the final decision is to be accepted. One of the strengths of our case is the synergy that exists between the Navy and the private sector. I am sure that both Plymouth and Portsmouth can make emotive cases, but ours in Plymouth is being made on hard facts and figures.
	The capacity of the industry to respond to the requirements of the Navy, whether for surface build and support or for refit, is vital for the service, and DML in Devonport has a key role to play. DML is a company that produces the type of outcome that the MOD requires; it is efficient and its work is to the highest specifications. DML, its management and trade unions, fully comprehend what is being asked of them.

Linda Gilroy: Does my hon. Friend agree that part of the reason why Devonport is able to offer value for money is due to the flexibility of the work force in deploying their skills into diversified private sector enterprise as well?

Alison Seabeck: I wholly agree with my hon. Friend; I need say no more than that.
	At the moment, there is a problem in respect of the ownership of DML, and that is a little unsettling. However, I have no doubt that, once those matters are resolved, the work force will settle down and do what they do best—that is, provide design, build and support solutions for the Navy.
	The Opposition's motion refers specifically to the new aircraft carriers. There are those in this House who cannot see the logic behind the development of the carriers and would prefer to see the surface fleet further enhanced. Yes, such investment would bring additional capability, but neither the versatility nor the flexibility that the carriers can offer. The new CVF will involve the largest vessels ever to have seen service in the Royal Navy, displacing some 65,000 tonnes and capable of supporting an air wing of about 50 aircraft.
	The carriers bring a strategic platform; it is like parking a small island, with all that that can offer, off the coast of an area close to a military theatre. Frigates and destroyers cannot do that. If we face conflict in a region where we have no close allies prepared to allow us to use them as a base, the demand for such vessels becomes very clear.
	Today's Navy is being asked to carry out tasks differently from how it was expected to two or three decades ago. The trainees and staff whom I met recently at HMS Raleigh understood well their role in the modern Navy; I should like to put on record how impressed I was by the young people whom I met.
	It is right that the MOD and the Royal Navy should seek to procure vessels that meet the flexible requirements of the future—the vessels on which the young men and women who walk through HMS Raleigh's gates will serve. It is, of course, also right that the MOD should take care to ensure that it is absolutely clear what the new carriers should cost before setting a contractual price for the industry to tilt at. Like most Members of this House, the Defence Committee included, I want the project to be taken forward and the Ministry to get best value for the taxpayer while ensuring that what is procured is what the Navy needs.
	I look forward to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary's response at the end of this debate. The carriers working alongside the new Type 45s and the new Astute class submarines, providing improved air capability, will continue to do what the UK needs to protect our shores and our citizens.

Julian Lewis: If I had to put a subtitle to this debate, it would be "The Mystery of the Phantom Fleet". We have been told repeatedly today, as we have been told previously by none other than the Prime Minister—so it must be true—that we are engaged in the largest shipbuilding operation for many a long year.
	I have been looking into the Government's record on ordering ships, because that is what we should be concerned about. It is not so much the question of what ships are coming into service today and have done during the past few years, but those that we can expect to come into service in the future because they have been ordered during the course of the present time.
	If I asked hon. Members how many ships had been ordered by this Government in the past five years, how many would they say—half a dozen, a dozen? If they were a little sceptical, they might say only three or four. Well, I can enlighten the House: the answer is one—an offshore patrol vessel is the only ship to have been ordered by this Government in the past five years.
	Let us look back at the Government's orders during the entirety of their time in office. During that period, they have ordered 16 warships, consisting of six Type 45 destroyers—originally there were supposed to be 12, then eight and now six, and there are grave fears, as we have heard, for ships seven and eight—four landing ships, two survey ships and four offshore patrol vessels, including HMS Clyde, to which I have already alluded. Of those 16 vessels, 10 may be described as major units. However, nearly all were ordered some years back.
	The Government are talking about a great shipbuilding programme. Could they mean the future carriers? All I can say to them is that I would like to help them out at this point. They should get on with it, place the order for the carriers and we will do our bit to carry forward their tonnage and certainly agree that the Government have that great shipbuilding programme under way. However, the Government show no sign of ordering the carriers.
	Let us compare that with the last eight years of Conservative Governments and what was ordered in the way of warships then. It does not quite compare to one offshore patrol vessel: two ballistic missile submarines, three nuclear powered attack submarines, nine frigates—including one, HMS Grafton, that this Government sold for a pittance when it was only nine years old—seven minehunters, two oilers and a survey ship. If I stopped at that point, one would think that a pretty good record by comparison, but I have not even mentioned the largest warship in the current Royal Navy, the helicopter carrier HMS Ocean, and the two assault ships, HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark, for whose coming into service the Government are happy to claim credit. However, the ships were, of course, ordered under the previous Conservative Government.
	Although 28 ships may indeed have come into service, we have to ask ourselves what future generations will say about the ships that will come into service as a result of the orders placed by this Government. There is, however, an even more serious matter than the cuts in warship numbers—to which I shall return if possible in the limited time available—which my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) mentioned in relation to the Prime Minister's comments about the level of the defence budget. I have the table showing the percentage of gross domestic product represented by the defence budget since the Government came into office. When they came into office, it went from 2.9 to 2.6 per cent., to 2.8 per cent., to 2.7 per cent., 2.7 per cent. again, to 2.5 per cent., 2.5 per cent. again, to 2.6 per cent., to 2.5 per cent. and then 2.5 per cent. again. One might say that that was a nice, steady constant level, except for the fact that we have engaged in two major conflicts in the past few years. We now gather that the Prime Minister thinks that we should include the cost of those two major conflicts in our comparisons of defence spending. If the cost of those conflicts—

Linda Gilroy: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Julian Lewis: No, I am afraid that I will not. The hon. Lady has intervened a great deal, and kept my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) out of the debate. I have no hesitation in saying no to her.
	When we engage in war fighting, the Government must find the extra money in the Treasury reserve. If they are not prepared to do so, they should not undertake to engage in conflicts. The future of the armed forces is being mortgaged to pay for current campaigns. That is unacceptable and irresponsible.
	Let me return to the question of what the strategic defence review said would be done, and what was actually done. The SDR laid down the number of warships required, which was cut from 35 originally not to 32 but to 25, as we have heard. May we have a categorical assurance from the Under-Secretary when he winds up that there is no proposal to mothball another six warships of the frigate and destroyer class, and to reduce the number of frigates and destroyers from 25 to only 19?
	The Minister of State referred with a considerable degree of pride to a letter that he had written to me about the readiness of ships and how they can be kept at different stages of readiness. He was happy to say that he regarded that as a model that people should rush to the Library to consult. I found only one point of real interest in that letter: he said that there were currently six major vessels in the Royal Navy of destroyer or frigate level or above that were at a state of low or very low readiness—a state in which they could reasonably be described as mothballed. Of those six ships, four were in refit, and one was HMS Invincible, which we know has been placed into mothballs. Which is the sixth ship? A frigate, a destroyer or an even more important ship is in a state of low or very low readiness, and we want to know its name today. Clearly, it is not being refitted, so I presume that it is being mothballed.
	In the extremely limited time left to me, I shall refer briefly to the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Peter Viggers), and the hon. Members for Portsmouth, North (Sarah McCarthy-Fry) and for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Hancock), all of whom are desperately concerned about the future of Portsmouth naval base. I say to them, as I do to the Government, that changes made for short-term reasons, whether to face current threats or budgetary restraints, must always be made in as flexible and reversible a way as possible. It is therefore absolute folly for the Government, because they have felt constrained to cut the number of ships way below the total that they said was necessary to fulfil the duties of the fleet, now to turn round and close one of our three naval bases. Just as the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Mr. Henderson) was right to defend keeping the nuclear deterrent because of the uncertainties of the future in respect of nuclear threats, it must be right to keep the basic infrastructure of three naval ports, however much we scale them down, to face the uncertain, unknowable threats of the future, which might require us not to be dependent on a single naval base in the south of England.
	Much more could be said, but I only have time to make one final point, which relates to the admirals. I do not envy either the current First Sea Lord or the previous one. The Government may try to convince themselves that there is a rumour mill and that stories are got up by the press, but those of us who know the Royal Navy know that the admirals are desperately worried about what is being done to their service. They are even more worried about the failure to order the carriers, which were the ramp used to make them accept the other cuts. That cannot go on; we need answers from the Government.

Derek Twigg: We have heard some strong contributions tonight, and I want to refer to a few of them.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, North (Sarah McCarthy-Fry) made another strong contribution, which referred to the benefits and strengths of Portsmouth as well as to the community there. Likewise, we heard a considered speech from the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Hancock), who referred again to the review. I should make it clear to the House that the point is to get the review right, rather than to be quick about it. It is therefore right that we take our time, and listen to the strong arguments that have been put forward today and previously, in coming to a decision. Many issues need to be discussed.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Alison Seabeck) also made a strong, considered and well-informed speech about Plymouth and the issues that are important to its community. She also referred to the comments of the First Sea Lord. I want to put on record again the statement by Admiral Band on 16 February 2007:
	"I do not think, and have not said, that the Royal Navy needs £1 billion-a-year extra to do its job or to keep ships at sea. Today's Royal Navy is funded to do what is asked of it—not least thanks to a current investment programme of £14 billion, and the delivery of 28 new ships in the last decade alone."
	I have listened carefully to the Opposition contributions, and I echo the comments of my right hon. Friend the Minister of State in welcoming the debate. In the short time that I have worked alongside him, the issues considered in relation to the Navy have been interesting.

Linda Gilroy: Did my hon. Friend note as I did that the Opposition took no responsibility for cutting the defence budget from 5.2 per cent. in 1983-84?

Derek Twigg: My hon. Friend makes an important point about the collective amnesia of the Opposition. It was interesting to hear their comments, and we have still not heard what they are willing to spend on the armed forces or the Royal Navy.
	Since I took up my present appointment, I have witnessed operations at first hand, through visits to HMS Sutherland in the north Arabian Gulf, and to HMS St. Albans, which played a leading role in the evacuation of people during the crisis in Lebanon, and the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious. In addition, I have visited 42 and 45 Commando in Afghanistan. I have never failed to be impressed by the professionalism, dedication, bravery and commitment of the men and women of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines.
	Navy personnel have not just been in action at sea. I recently visited our forces in Afghanistan, where there are many naval personnel. About half of those I met were from the Royal Navy or Royal Marines. They were deployed in many different roles: as members of combat forces, helicopter pilots, fighter pilots, engineers, medics or support. There can be no clearer demonstration of the relevance and importance of today's naval service than the fact that it has been intimately involved in operations in Helmand and has made a direct difference to the lives of people there. The efforts of our brave servicemen and women are, I am sure, acknowledged by all Members of the House.
	In the hospital at Camp Bastion, I met a Royal Marine who had been wounded in the leg. Talking about his recovery, he said that all he wanted to do was get back to his mates in his company. That shows the determination and courage of our armed forces personnel.
	It is ironic that the Opposition raise in their motion questions about reductions in numbers of ships in service with the Navy. I realise that many of them were not around the last time their party was in power. Perhaps they have forgotten what happened to the Royal Navy under their stewardship. Although I believe that the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) mentioned this, I remind them that in the early 1990s there were 48 ships in the Navy's frigate and destroyer fleet. As a result of the "Options for Change" review, that number had dropped to 35 by 1997.
	Let me be absolutely clear: contrary to recent inaccurate reports, we have taken no decision to reduce the number of Royal Navy warships in operational service, or to place six frigates and destroyers at 'extended readiness', or to 'mothball' 50 per cent. of the fleet. We are determined to maintain an effective and potent Navy, and I underline the fact that it is resourced with enough frigates, destroyers, and other capital ships to meet our current operational commitments.
	What is more, the present Government are committed to introducing new capabilities into service with the Royal Navy. That does not just mean new and more technologically advanced ships and submarines, although that is necessary, of course; it means looking at new weapons systems and upgrading those that we will retain into the future, supplying new fighting vehicles for the Marines, and making sure that there is a solid support base within UK industry.
	At the heart of our plans for the future are the two new aircraft carriers. They will be the largest and most powerful warships ever built in this country and will form the cornerstone of our expeditionary capability. When they enter service, the UK will have significantly greater strike capability, and it will be primarily based at sea—4 acres of British sovereign territory able to travel more 500 miles per day. Equipped with offensive air power in the form of the joint strike fighter, carrier strike will form the core of the most capable mobile strike force outside the United States and represent a quantum leap in military capability for the UK's armed forces.
	They will be complemented by the versatile Daring-class destroyers, which will reinvent the traditional backbone of the Navy—its frigate and destroyer fleet. We have ordered six of those. My right hon. Friend the Minister of State attended the launch of the second, HMS —[ Interruption. ]

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. There are far too many conversations going on in the Chamber. Members who have been here this afternoon want to hear the Minister's reply.

Derek Twigg: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
	As I was saying, my right hon. Friend the Minister of State attended the launch of the second, HMS Dauntless, at the end of last month. The Type 45s will be the largest and most powerful air defence destroyers ever built for the Royal Navy and will feature a world-beating air defence missile system. They will also have a comprehensive suite of other weapons and equipment that will ensure that they can be deployed on a wide range of military tasks. Equipment already selected for the class includes a main gun for shore bombardment and either the Merlin or the Lynx 8 helicopter, both of which will carry Stingray anti-submarine torpedoes. Each Type 45 will also be able to embark a force of up to 60 Royal Marine commandos or other troops and use its aircraft and boats to support them on operations. In short, they will be highly capable ships that are able to make a decisive impact across a spectrum of operations.
	We are also investing in new and powerful nuclear hunter-killer submarines, the first of which, HMS Astute, will be launched shortly. They too will offer a wide range of capabilities, including the ability to project power from sea to land in the form of the extended range Tomahawk missile. We have ordered three to date, and the first will be launched this summer.
	Ashore, the manoeuvre capability of the Royal Marines has been significantly improved by the recent procurement of a fleet of Viking vehicles. The Viking is one of the MOD's most advanced armoured land vehicles and is the first armoured vehicle to be operated by the corps for more than fifty years. The amphibious Vikings are all-terrain vehicles capable of operating anywhere in the world, and they can be quickly deployed in jungle, desert or arctic conditions. They are currently proving their worth on highly demanding operations in Afghanistan, and the feedback that we have had is excellent.
	We have made marked progress in modernising and updating the Royal Navy. One of the best examples is the new Sonar 2087 system, which has a much improved performance against quieter nuclear and conventional submarines, as well as a capability in the demanding littoral environment foreseen in the SDR. With the introduction of the highly advanced Merlin helicopter, it provides the Navy with a quantum increase in anti-submarine warfare capability. The result is that underwater area coverage is increased ninefold and surface radar coverage is doubled. Merlin is also significantly faster, has greater endurance and carries twice as many torpedoes. We have signed a £1 billion deal to ensure Merlin is kept up to date and ready to meet all emerging future threats. I saw Merlins operating in the Gulf, and I pay tribute to the work they are doing there contributing to maritime security.
	I could go on to talk about the other areas where we have made tremendous progress in modernising and updating the Royal Navy, but I think that it is obvious that the Government are not neglecting the Navy—indeed, it is clear from the list of our achievements that we cannot be. We will continue to deploy worldwide in support of our nation, our people and our interests. We will continue to ensure that we have sufficient numbers of capable and motivated personnel at the heart of the service, and I believe they can look forward to a bright future carrying forward the proud traditions of the naval service and as a force for good.

Question put, That the original words stand part of the Question:—
	 The House divided: Ayes 209, Noes 288.

Question accordingly negatived.
	 Question, That the proposed words be there added , put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 31 (Questions on amendments), and agreed to.
	Madam Deputy Speaker  forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.
	 Resolved,
	That this House notes with approval the Government's very considerable investment in new warship building, including the new Type 45 destroyers, of which two have already been launched, the new Astute class nuclear submarines, the first of which will be launched later this year, and the two Future Aircraft Carriers, which will be the largest ships ever to serve with the Royal Navy; notes that 28 new ships have entered service with the Royal Navy since 1997; views with concern ill-informed and inaccurate suggestions that warships will be 'mothballed'; and congratulates the Government for its responsible stewardship of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines during a period of extremely high operational tempo.

Electoral System

Madam Deputy Speaker: I inform hon. Members that Mr. Speaker has chosen the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister. Please will hon. Members who are not staying for the debate leave the Chamber quickly and quietly?

Oliver Heald: I beg to move,
	That this House believes that all electors are entitled to a free, fair and secure vote; notes that in its Eleventh Report the Committee on Standards in Public Life found evidence of a continuing threat of fraud in the electoral system and called for the implementation of secure individual voter registration and other measures to protect integrity; regrets the unwillingness of the Government to adopt such a system in Great Britain despite calls from the Committee, the Electoral Commission and many others; welcomes the investigation by the Council of Europe into electoral fraud in the United Kingdom and the visit to London today of two rapporteurs; expresses concern at Government attempts to introduce electronic voting until such time as adequate security measures are available; and believes that urgent steps are needed to restore public confidence and integrity in the electoral system, starting with individual voter registration.
	The debate has been prompted by the continuing concern about the risk of fraud in our electoral system and particularly by the recent report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life and the visit, starting today, of two rapporteurs from the Council of Europe, who are examining the risk of electoral fraud in the United Kingdom and an initial monitoring process for elections. Who would ever have thought that it would come to this?  [Interruption.] The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland says that is typical of Europe, but I thought that his party was in favour of Europe, certainly the Council of Europe.
	All electors are entitled to a free, fair and secure vote, and the United Kingdom has prided itself since the Victorian period on having systems in place to provide it. In fact, the author of the modern polling station, H. S. Chapman, even has a society named after him, manned by electoral lawyers and administrators. Before Labour was elected, Labour Members took that seriously. They talked about restoring trust in Government and the importance of the political process. However, since coming to office, Labour has tinkered with the electoral system and repeatedly ignored cross-party warnings, and has thereby damaged the integrity of our electoral system.
	The Government wanted to increase the ease and convenience of voting. That is fair enough—it is a perfectly laudable aim—but they have not provided the parallel measures needed to minimise the risk of fraud. That is where they have failed. There is a case for modernising the electoral system to reflect new realities in the way people live their lives—friends sharing homes, more people living alone and the changed standing of women in our society—but none of that has been done. The Government's modernisation programme has been ill thought through and has resulted in a collapse of public confidence. Even though the Government introduced a Bill last Session, now the Electoral Administration Act 2006, they have consistently ducked the main recommendation of the cross-party alliance calling for change: the introduction of individual voter registration.
	The extent to which public opinion has been touched by the Government's antics is shown by the MORI poll that found that 54 per cent. of the public think that postal voting has made it easier to commit fraud. The introduction of postal voting on demand without adequate security measures to combat the increased risk of fraud was the major turning point.

David Taylor: The hon. Gentleman refers, rightly, to the turning point being in 2000, when postal votes on demand first became part of the British system, but is not it correct that his own party—indeed, all parties—welcomed and supported the introduction of postal voting on demand as a worthwhile step to broaden participation in the electoral process?

Oliver Heald: The hon. Gentleman may have missed the point that I made just a moment ago, which is that the aim of increasing ease of access to voting is laudable and we would all agree with it, but it is wrong if the Government do not take the parallel measures that are necessary to secure the protection of the system. That is what we have been saying—not just the Conservatives; I include the Liberal Democrats. We have made that point from the outset.
	Ministers were warned. After the 2003 local election all-postal voting pilots, SOLACE—the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers—wrote to the then Minister, the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford), saying that
	"there is increasing concern about electoral fraud...we consider that the current position runs the risk of the whole process being discredited."

Jane Kennedy: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, because I know that many Members want to speak, but I invite him to consider the fact that we, as political parties, have a responsibility to ensure that voters are not misled. I invite him to consider what he would do if he discovered that after the electoral returning officer had secured the signatures of postal voters as required, in the proper way, a prospective candidate for the local elections wrote to all postal voters, informing them that all current postal votes had been cancelled and that they should apply to him if they did not get a further application to register. If I told him that it was a Liberal Democrat prospective candidate for the council, would he be surprised by the double standards that the Liberal Democrats apply?

Hon. Members: No.

Oliver Heald: The right hon. Lady has obviously struck a chord in the House. I noticed many hon. Members saying that they would not be at all surprised. Perhaps I would not be either. If I am really fair about this for a moment— [Interruption.] I think I should be. The point that we are making is that if there are loopholes in the system and glaring omissions in security, there will always be people who are so desperate to be elected to whatever post that they will defraud the system. That is why we need the protections that we are talking about.

Philip Davies: In Bradford, there have unfortunately been quite a number of complaints about electoral fraud, and Bradford council is one of the councils that are keen to have individual registration, because it knows how big a difference that would make. In west Yorkshire the police, who should be spending a lot of time investigating proper crimes that affect people in our communities, are having to spend an awful lot of time investigating either genuine or malicious complaints of electoral fraud because of the lax system. Does my hon. Friend agree that the police need to spend time on other crimes, rather than wasting time on electoral fraud?

Oliver Heald: My hon. Friend makes an important point. When the Committee on Standards in Public Life examined the issue, it found more than 300 cases of electoral malpractice and it recommended—I shall come to this later in my remarks—that the Government should be doing the research to find out the current level of fraud. I invite the Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, the hon. Member for Lewisham, East (Bridget Prentice), to commit herself, when she replies, to making the results of such research available, because it is very important.

David Taylor: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Oliver Heald: Not for a moment.
	In June 2004, the Government imposed all-postal voting in the face of cross-party and Electoral Commission opposition. There was chaos. One result was even annulled by an election court in the responsible Cabinet Minister's backyard of Hull. The Labour party should not be too smug about the question of fraud, because the Labour campaign manual advised activists to build their own ballot boxes and go around collecting postal votes. It said:
	"You could even have a ballot box for people to put their votes in which you can then deliver to the returning officer."
	People were being misled into thinking that Labour party workers were something to do with the electoral system.
	Meanwhile, in Parliament, concern was rising. I took the issue up with the then Leader of the House on several occasions, and a former colleague, Dame Marion Roe, identified just how inaccurate the electoral registers had become. In an important debate in Westminster Hall, she made the point that
	"an accurate electoral register is the cornerstone of any democracy."—[ Official Report, Westminster Hall, 5 May 2004; Vol. 420, c. 441WH.]
	She had noticed ineligible people appearing on the register in her constituency, started to make inquiries and discovered that no proper checks were being made. She was shocked that, through parliamentary questions, she was able to uncover that when a "cleaning exercise" took place and the names of the people on the register were checked to see whether they lived at the addresses that were given, literally thousands of names had to be taken off the register. She gave the worst examples. Some 15,486 individuals, or 18.6 per cent. of the register, were removed in Brentford and Isleworth and 11,210, or 14.5 per cent., were removed in Portsmouth, South. She gave other examples that showed that there was a major problem. One example that she gave was that of a journalist who had been able to get himself registered in 31 constituencies using the name "Gus Troovbev", which is actually an anagram of "bogus voter".
	In April 2005, an election court found Labour councillors in Birmingham guilty and the commissioner Richard Mawrey described fraud that
	"could disgrace a banana republic."
	In the general election of 2005, for the first time, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe sent election observers from Ukraine and Serbia to police our elections. In their report, they raised concerns about security.
	On 22 June 2005, I led a debate on the integrity of the process, pointing out the need for individual voter registration and security measures such as those introduced in Northern Ireland in 2002. Despite the support of most parties in the House for individual voter registration, the Government have persistently refused to introduce such a system. They prefer to leave in place the system in which the head of the household fills in the form for all those in the home. Not only is this very old fashioned, looking back to the days before the equality of women was recognised, but it fails to recognise the way in which people now live their lives. In homes in multiple occupation, one wonders how many forms are simply thrown away by one housemate, unwittingly depriving the others of their voter registration. The right to vote is an individual right and it should be individually registered and exercised.

Simon Hughes: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. He has pursued this matter assiduously and has rightly said that it is foolish to make party political points— [ Interruption. ] No: Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Democratic Unionist and British National party members have been convicted of electoral fraud in this decade. I therefore hope that we will not make silly and pointless allegations.
	Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the way to remedy a Government failure to implement what the Electoral Commission kept on telling us was needed is to have a procedure whereby the commission's recommendations are automatically laid—perhaps by a member of the Speaker's Committee—before Parliament so that they do not depend on the partisan view of the Government of the day?

Oliver Heald: The recommendation that Sir Alistair Graham has made is that we should actually get together and talk about how we introduce individual voter registration. I hope that the Minister will invite us to a meeting so that we can do exactly that.

David Taylor: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Oliver Heald: No, I think the hon. Gentleman has had a good go.
	The Electoral Commission said in May 2005 that household registration should be replaced with a system of individual voter registration, and repeated that point again during the course of the debates on the Electoral Administration Bill. In its briefing for this debate, it says that
	"the Commission remains concerned that its recommendation for a system of individual voter registration to underpin the security of the voting system has not been adopted".
	It is not the only voice. There is cross-party support, and in its recent report on the Electoral Commission, the Graham committee looked at this issue. It pointed to the success of individual voter registration in Northern Ireland, which has the most accurate and comprehensive register in the UK.  [ Interruption. ] The Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, the hon. Member for Lewisham, East, scoffs, but the Government themselves have described individual registration as
	"central to enhancing the accuracy of, and confidence in, the electoral register in Northern Ireland."
	Both the current electoral registration officer for Northern Ireland, Douglas Bain, and his predecessor, Denis Stanley, have told me that they are confident that those who are on the register are those entitled to vote. Indeed, in previous debates hon. Members from Northern Ireland have confirmed that. The Graham committee recommends implementation of individual voter registration and that the political parties should start discussions now. It is now over to the Minister; let us get on and do this. It is even said now that the Leader of the House expressed sympathy with that view in a meeting with Lobby journalists last week.
	The Graham committee compiled evidence of 342 cases of electoral malpractice and criticised the lack of central monitoring. It pointed to three main risks: fraudulent registration, impersonation at the polling station and misuse of postal votes. It highlighted the "perennial difficulty" of detecting fraud and called for the research to which I have referred.
	On impersonation at the polling station, the Minister's answer in the Electoral Administration Act was that someone should sign for their ballot paper when they attend the polling station. Unfortunately, the measure was so badly drafted in the Act that she is not able to implement it, so will she explain how she now intends to proceed? The Committee on Standards in Public Life described the measure as "not remotely strong", but now we have nothing at all.
	On postal voting, in addition to individual voter registration, the committee suggests "an objective identifier". Has the Minister had any further thoughts on this, or is she saying that we have to wait for the identity cards database, as some of the consultation documents suggest? We believe that the national insurance number, as in Northern Ireland, is best suited to the purpose, without any of the lengths of intrusion or expense of ID cards.
	Important elections take place in May. No proper checks are being made on the accuracy of the register. It is still possible for the so-called head of household to fill in names on the register and there is no simple way of checking that they even exist. The measures to protect voting at the polling station with signatures for ballot papers cannot be implemented. We are told by the Graham committee that only 20 per cent. of postal votes are proposed to be checked for the correct signature and date of birth, and the extra requirements of a signature and date of birth cannot be checked electronically. We cannot be satisfied that these votes will be secure.
	The Government are going even further and, despite all the reservations of experts in the field who say that it is dangerous, they are moving ahead with their idea of e-voting. The Foundation for Information Policy Research said that the only way to allow electronic voting is
	"through machines controlled by election officials that produce an auditable paper trail. Anything else is an invitation for fraud to hackers and virus writers".
	However, that is what the Minister thinks we should have in this country; that is what she is doing with her pilots.
	The Council of Europe, which has sent its rapporteurs here, has noted in a recent resolution
	"a growing body of evidence that widespread absent vote fraud is taking place in the UK".
	The rapporteurs are investigating, and I understand that the Minister and I are to meet them tomorrow, although separately. Will she finally give us the good news that the Government will concede individual voter registration? Is she really not prepared to accept the recommendations of the Committee on Standards in Public Life and start a dialogue? The committee has already rubbished half the job that the Government gave to the Electoral Commission, but on the other half, the central point that the commission, which the Government set up, is making is that the missing piece in the jigsaw is individual voter registration in a country where the individual has the right to vote. Is she really happy for this country to continue to be embarrassed and shamed at home and abroad by not having the sort of free, fair and secure electoral system that is our birthright in Britain, which has the mother of all Parliaments?

Bridget Prentice: I beg to move, To leave out from "House" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
	"believes that the Government has introduced a range of sensible and proportionate measures to ensure that elections are safe and secure; recognises that public confidence in the electoral process is paramount; believes that the Government is taking an appropriate and sensible approach in testing and trialling e-voting before making any decision to introduce it or not; supports the action being taken by the Government to ensure that electoral registers are comprehensive and accurate; and notes that these issues were debated during the passage of the Electoral Administration Act 2006 through Parliament."
	I welcome the chance to debate again the issues that we covered during the debates on the Electoral Administration Bill some eight months ago. It is a good opportunity to repeat an account of the actions that the Government have taken to protect the integrity of the electoral system. Let me begin by emphasising my profound belief that we—parliamentarians, politicians and members of political parties, and others who speak on the issue—must do everything that we can to support people's ability to participate in our elections. That is as crucial to the legitimacy of our democracy as anything else. If someone is not on the register, they cannot vote, even if they want to, and if they cannot vote, they have no say in who governs them and who decides on their taxes, their health service, their transport, or even, looking back to the earlier debate today, their navy—nothing. They are excluded and silenced.
	I notice that the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) did not refer to this point when he talked about the electoral register, but we are led to believe that there are something in the region of 3.5 million people in this country who are not on the register, but who are entitled to vote. That is 3.5 million people who are excluded and silenced. That is the equivalent of between 30 and 40 parliamentary constituencies. Soon, we will be looking at the boundary commission's recommendations on parliamentary constituencies. I hope that hon. Members will consider that there are 30 to 40 parliamentary constituencies that are not being represented because people are excluded from the register. We have a duty to encourage registration and participation.

Gordon Prentice: Did the Government ever give consideration to my suggestion—some people thought that it was slightly eccentric—of rewarding people for going on the electoral register? Perhaps they could be given tax breaks, or additions to benefits if they are in receipt of a pension or other benefit entitlements.

Bridget Prentice: We always consider my hon. Friend's suggestions carefully, although we have not, as yet, decided to follow any of them through. I am sure that we can have another look at them. I am always keen to hear what he has to say on these matters, if not any others.

Daniel Kawczynski: The Minister seems to be implying that the new system of postal voting will help those 3 million people to vote, but in my constituency, a lot of service personnel who are abroad still did not get their postal votes, despite the new system, and were unable to vote.

Bridget Prentice: I have not mentioned postal votes yet, but the hon. Gentleman has raised an important issue about service personnel. With the Electoral Commission and the Ministry of Defence, a lot of work is being done, as we speak, to ensure that service personnel abroad are given all the information that they need about registering to vote. As I understand it, the Electoral Commission says that if service personnel send back that information as soon as they get it, all of that will be taken on board. We are monitoring that situation carefully to ensure that service personnel are not disfranchised while they are serving our country.
	Alongside the duty to get more people on to the register, we have a duty not to undermine the system by scaremongering about the level of fraud. That brings me to what the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire had to say. Disproportionate attacks are as much to blame for driving down confidence in our system, elections, politicians and Parliament as anything else. He mentioned a poll that showed that people believe that there is fraud in the system. The Electoral Commission commissioned a poll and more than half of the people who thought that fraud was a problem said that it was because they had read about it in the newspapers. So, it was not because they had experienced fraud themselves, but because they had been influenced by what the media were saying. On that basis, the hon. Gentleman must be careful about spreading further rumours.

Oliver Heald: It is not just me; it is the Committee on Standards in Public Life—the most senior body in this country charged with maintaining standards and investigating organisations such as the Electoral Commission. I am saying what the committee said. Is the Minister accusing Sir Alistair Graham and that important committee of scaremongering?

Bridget Prentice: I was going to come to the Committee on Standards in Public Life later, but I will come to it now. Sir Alistair and the committee have produced a useful report, much of which we agree with and, no doubt at some point, given time, will implement. However, the hon. Gentleman said that the Committee on Standards in Public Life had demanded that the Government conduct research into fraud. Actually, the committee did not say that. It recommended that the Electoral Commission conduct research into fraud, and the Electoral Commission is already doing that.
	I turn to the point that the hon. Gentleman raises when he waves about the 342 cases of electoral malpractice. The Electoral Commission is looking at those files at the moment. Having discussed the matter with electoral administrators this morning, I know that they are of the belief that the vast majority of those cases involve not electoral fraud, but people not filling in their nomination papers properly, there not being imprints on the leaflets that go out and all the other issues that those of us who campaign in elections know are fraught with danger. That is what the majority of the cases involve. I hope that he will not continue to repeat them as if to imply that fraud is endemic in this country.

David Taylor: The Minister rightly points out that the vast bulk of allegations of electoral malpractice do not involve flaws with the voting process itself. Will she confirm that, in the last nationwide elections 10 months ago, which involved 176 local authorities and thousands of wards, there were just 16 electoral petitions in relation to the process, four of which—three in Tower Hamlets and one in Coventry—involved fraud? All four were either dismissed or withdrawn. Is that not the fact?

Bridget Prentice: My hon. Friend makes the point extremely well. In the last six years, there have been 25,000-plus elections throughout the country, but, as he points out, there have been only a handful of cases in which electoral fraud was alleged—never mind cases that were taken up by the Crown Prosecution Service and seen through to conviction.

Oliver Heald: The Committee on Standards in Public Life lists examples of the sorts of cases it is talking about. They include personation, forgery, postal votes being forged, fraudulent voting, forged postal and proxy votes and forging documents. Is the Minister seriously saying that those are minor matters of electoral malpractice?

Bridget Prentice: I am most certainly not—unlike the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), who seemed to think that we should not bother getting the police to pursue electoral offences. The police should pursue those offences. The Electoral Commission is looking at all those files and we will all be better placed to discuss them once the commission has analysed them. It will publicise those results.

Philip Davies: I did not say that the police should not investigate electoral fraud. My point was that they should not have to investigate all those accusations, and would not have to do so if there were a robust process of individual registration in place. It is not that the police should not investigate, but that they should not have to investigate this level of complaints.

Bridget Prentice: The police should have to investigate any criminal activity wherever they find it. That applies whether it is electoral fraud, robbery, violence or whatever. That is the job of the police, and a very good job they do too.
	Postal voting on demand was introduced in 2001, with all-party support. Clearly, it was a popular decision with the electorate, because in the 2005 general election 12 per cent. of the electorate opted to have a postal ballot, and such votes accounted for some 15 per cent. of all votes cast. We must continue to make sure that postal voting is available, because of the changes in lifestyle that the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire mentioned. However, I recognise that any electoral fraud is serious. It must be prevented. If it does occur, it must be detected, and those who are found guilty must be punished accordingly. That was why we ensured that additional offences were added through the Electoral Administration Act 2006.

Daniel Kawczynski: Will the Minister give way?

Bridget Prentice: I really would like to move on because several Back Benchers wish to speak and the debate has been curtailed already.
	The 2006 Act introduced the new offence of falsely applying for postal votes, and extended the offence of undue influence so that it became an offence even to attempt to exercise undue influence. It also created the offence of providing false information to a registration officer at any time and gave the police extra time before prosecutions needed to be brought forward. I know that the police were keen to see that, and they have welcomed the measure.
	There are new regulations in place to tighten the security of postal voting further. Administrators are now required to send confirmation letters to applicants for postal votes. Any postal voter who wants a vote to be redirected must give a reason why that should happen. Other measures include new secrecy warnings on election stationery and the introduction of a marked register for postal votes returned, which will help to detect fraudulent postal votes. Registration officers have the power to cross-match with other records held. Those new measures demonstrate that we have taken every allegation of electoral fraud seriously and that we are absolutely determined to prevent any future incidents of fraud, as far as we can, while ensuring that the anti-fraud measures are proportionate to the scale of the problem.

Brian Binley: I first ran an election as an agent in 1966. Electoral registration officers were an important part of the process and, indeed, were very skilled and stayed around for a very long time. I ran 11 elections in all, so I have some experience of this matter. Does the Minister recognise that the Government have placed massive additional burdens on those officers without providing them with the resources to undertake those responsibilities properly? Will she tell us what she might do to improve the situation, which lies right at the heart of the problems about which she is talking?

Bridget Prentice: I am delighted to respond to the hon. Gentleman, who has much experience of dealing with elections. I am sure that he will be equally delighted to hear that we have put in place an extra £21 million to deal with the extra duties that we introduced through the 2006 Act. We have given a direct grant to address other aspects of that Act. There are now performance targets that are overseen by the Electoral Commission, and, in the next month or so, we will be introducing beacon status in the system so that local authorities that conduct their elections very well will be able to disseminate their good practice among others. I agree wholeheartedly that we are doing a great deal, but we are putting the money in place, too.

Daniel Kawczynski: Will the Minister give way?

Bridget Prentice: I will not give way again.
	We have been working with the Electoral Commission and the police to raise awareness of fraud and to ensure that systems are in place to tackle it. I commend to the House the updated guidance that the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Electoral Commission have produced on fraud prevention and detection for use at this year's elections. The guidance includes an outline of election procedures and recommended actions, guidance to the police on producing a police threat assessment and control strategy, and a list of electoral offences and the maximum penalty for each offence. It also includes a revised code for political parties, candidates and canvassers on the handling of postal vote applications and postal ballot papers, which has been agreed by all three main political parties and the Electoral Commission. My right hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Jane Kennedy) might wish to take up the matter that she raised earlier with the Electoral Commission.

Jane Kennedy: We have discovered in Liverpool a quite deliberate attempt by a Liberal Democrat councillor, Councillor Graham Hulme, who held his ward last year by only 13 votes, to mislead postal voters into believing that their postal vote had been cancelled and that the best way to get it back was to contact him personally. It is deeply dishonourable, if not fraudulent, for a politician to behave in such a way, and those involved should hang their heads in shame.

Bridget Prentice: I agree with my right hon. Friend. I do not wish to be partisan during this debate because I believe absolutely and profoundly that everyone should be encouraged to vote, regardless of the party for which they are going to vote. However, the description that she has given the House suggests to me that such an activity is outwith the guidance to which the Electoral Commission, the police and the main political parties have agreed. I suggest that she might wish to direct the Electoral Commission and the returning officer to that candidate so that the matter can be dealt with appropriately.
	The hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire talked about personal identifiers. The Government have no objection in principle to personal identifiers. He was a little flexible in his description of what the Electoral Commission wanted and what the Conservative party wanted. One of the reasons why we went down the road on postal vote identifiers that we did in the 2006 Act was because that was the only way in which we could get cross-party consensus. The Conservative party did not want the same thing as the Electoral Commission wanted and we could not get consensus across the House, which was why we accepted the compromise on postal vote identifiers that was incorporated in the Act.
	Let me turn to the Council of Europe and its motion on the United Kingdom's electoral system. The observers to whom the hon. Gentleman referred were here at our invitation. We invited them to come along and observe —[ Interruption. ] Yes, indeed. We encourage people to come, and we put it in the Act that we would invite people to come and observe our elections. The Council of Europe motion was agreed by a large number of Conservative Members and members of the European Democrat Group. Of course, I look forward to meeting the rapporteurs tomorrow and discussing all the measures that we have put in place to make our system more secure since 2004. However, I will also say to them that we believe that we have made the system as secure as possible and that the 2006 Act demonstrates not only that we welcome observers from all countries and organisations, but that this particular investigation is unwarranted.

David Wilshire: rose—

Bridget Prentice: I give way to the hon. Gentleman—I believe that he voted for the motion.

David Wilshire: No, I was the person who tabled it. The Council of Europe has decided that there is a prima facie case that the Government are conniving with regard to postal vote fraud and are thus in breach of the obligations to which they are signed up. When will the Minister take those obligations seriously?

Bridget Prentice: Unlike the hon. Gentleman, I take my obligations seriously. The Council of Europe has not done such a thing. A sub-committee has come up with a motion, which will have to go back for debate in the Council of Europe. When we meet the rapporteurs, I hope that they will see that the measures that we have put in place make our system very secure. As my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) said, our experience in all the elections that have taken place over the past few years makes it quite clear that our elections are fair, free and secure. We must take a proportionate view of the problems that we are discussing.
	I agree with the part of the Opposition's motion that says that we should not introduce e-voting unless adequate security measures are available, and that is exactly how we are proceeding. We are taking an appropriate and sensible approach by testing e-voting to ensure that if there are benefits to it, they are realised, and to ensure that the issues are addressed effectively. We will do that before we make any decision on whether to introduce it. We are not taking a knee-jerk approach; that accusation might be made against people in some other places, where new technologies have been introduced with results that have caused concern.
	Our electoral modernisation programme is about testing innovations to find out whether they might be beneficial—whether, for example, they improve access for people who are unable to attend a traditional polling station on election day, people with disabilities and people who do not have English as a first language. We do that by piloting, as that is the appropriate way of testing those innovations. I know that the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire is not as keen on piloting as we are, because he said so to the Committee on Standards in Public Life.
	Ultimately, the issue is about public confidence in our democracy. It is important to keep matters in perspective; otherwise, we may well do more harm than good. There is also the risk that action to tackle perceived electoral fraud will depress levels of participation, so we must be careful to test all the schemes that we try to put in place. The legislative measures that we have already introduced tighten up anti-fraud measures and demonstrate that our system is now much more secure. They were brought in primarily, but not exclusively, to bolster the security of the postal vote process. The measures that we introduced are sensible and proportionate, and they respond to the concerns that people have raised. On that basis, I commend our amendment to the House.

Simon Hughes: I welcome this debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) on taking the initiative and tabling the motion. As you may have worked out from the fact that my colleagues and I have not tabled an amendment, Mr. Deputy Speaker, we will support the motion without reservation. We think that the debate is timely as we are in the run-up to the local elections, and because it follows a clear view having been expressed by the Committee on Standards in Public Life. A persistently clear view has been expressed by the Electoral Commission, too, in both the previous and the current Parliament.
	The Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, the hon. Member for Lewisham, East (Bridget Prentice), has always been willing to engage in debate on the subject, and she is concerned to make sure that the Government respond to it appropriately. The debate is about three things in general, although there is a list of agenda items, as it were, in the motion. It is about maximising the registration of people who are eligible to vote. I share the Minister's view that we are nowhere near to doing so yet; I will come back to that point. Clearly, there are many people who should have the right to vote who do not. Some of them, when the time comes, discover that they have not got that right, and are very angry to discover it. We have all seen people come into polling stations insisting that they are eligible to vote, but finding that, for one reason or another, they are not on the electoral roll.
	Secondly, the debate is about maximising turnout at elections. No matter what party we are in, it is in our interests that there should be a much better turnout. There used to be much better turnout, but it declined. It has just begun to increase again, thank goodness, but turnout is nothing like what it should be. It must be in the interests of healthy politics for people to participate in choosing their local council, London Assembly members, a mayor—in the places that have one—Members of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, whose elections are coming up, Members of the United Kingdom Parliament, and Members of the European Parliament. That is clearly an objective.
	The third objective of the debate must be maximum accuracy. If we are to ensure maximum integrity of the voting system, it is important to ensure maximum accuracy of the electoral register. That is the issue before us today. We all have stories to tell—the Minister, the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire and I, and many other hon. Members of all parties have told such stories—about how, after looking at electoral registers, it has been blindingly obvious that there are people on it who should not be, and people who are not on it who should be.

Christopher Fraser: The armed services.

Simon Hughes: The armed services are the most significant general category, and my hon. Friends and I have made that point, in support of Conservative colleagues, who, to be fair, have also been persistent in arguing that case. There are also people who appear twice on the electoral register, as there are people who died a long time ago and whose names should not have remained on the list.
	I want to pay tribute to four groups, because it is easy to be critical without saying thank you. First, I pay tribute to the Electoral Commission, which has had an unfairly critical press. Since it was set up, it has been absolutely clear about what it thought was needed. In particular, on the issue of individual registration, as opposed to head-of-household registration, it has said what it thinks time and again, and in every report that it made to Parliament. It was not its fault that Parliament did not follow up on what it recommended. We set the commission up, rightly, some years ago, and it has done an independent, non-partisan job. It kept on saying that individual registration was a better system. Last month, in an article in  The Times, Peter Riddell said:
	"The commission can be faulted for not being vigorous enough in pursuing and highlighting abuses, though that partly reflects weaknesses in its original remit. But it is hard to see what it could have done when ministers insisted on pressing ahead with postal voting on demand."
	The Electoral Commission was criticised too much by the Committee on Standards in Public Life on that issue, and that was unfair, given how consistent the commission has been.
	I pay tribute to the people who do the work out in the field every day. The hon. Member for Northampton, South (Mr. Binley) has been involved in more elections than I have, and he started when I was very young indeed.

Jim Devine: He lost.

Simon Hughes: He may have lost; I am not sure. The hon. Member for Northampton, South made the point that the people on the ground often think that they do not have enough resources. It is important that local government officers who do the job have the resources, not just in cash, but in personnel and support. The Minister has said that there is now more on the table, and that is welcome. Those officers often do a good job, but that job is not always given priority, year in and year out, outside election time, by the political leadership. I am clear about the fact that we need to make sure that that small group of people—often there is a handful of full-time employees, but sometimes there are just one or two full-time employees, who recruit extra people—have a much more secure basis in local councils than they do at the moment.

Brian Binley: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, although the Minister mentioned that the Government had allocated an extra £21 million, that equates to £30,000 per constituency? Does he also agree that that does not nearly cover the additional burden that has been placed on electoral registration officers over the past five years? More particularly, that money is not ring-fenced, so we do not even know whether it will be spent on that purpose.

Simon Hughes: I have not done the maths, so I do not know exactly what the figures are, but it sounds to me as though £30,000 per local authority will not go very far. That will pay for a member of staff, to put it bluntly, and not a very senior member of staff, either. Certainly, it is no good giving the money if it is not ring-fenced for the purpose. There ought to be a real assessment of the cost of putting in place enough people in every local authority, so that we can deliver the electoral system that we all want. At the end of the debate, perhaps the Minister can tell us whether there has been such an assessment.

Jim Devine: As the hon. Gentleman knows, I live in his constituency, and I am impressed by the local electoral registration officer. I get two letters, a personal visit, and a final letter telling me that if I do not register and fill in the appropriate documents, I will be fined £1,000. I have gone back to Scotland and used that model.

Simon Hughes: I am grateful for that, and I am happy to have the hon. Gentleman in my constituency, as he knows; he is very welcome. If I may say so, he has already made a good contribution in the House. I do not mean to patronise him in any way. He has done extremely well on certain issues. He is right: in recent years my local authority has tried hard to do that job well, and to do it better. I think that it is doing so, and the Minister's borough next door—Lewisham—is trying to do so, too. Good practice yields dividends, because other local authorities can emulate it.

Alan Beith: My hon. Friend understands the importance of that work. When the Select Committees on Constitutional Affairs and on the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister jointly looked at the issue of individual registration it became clear that, important as individual registration is, it could well result in a significant fall in the number of people registered. It must therefore be accompanied by measures to increase the registration of people who ought to be on the register.

Simon Hughes: That is absolutely true. In Northern Ireland, the figures went down a little when the new systems were implemented, but they started to go up.  [ Interruption. ] The Minister says that they are going down again, which is sad news. Certainly, it is difficult to track down every resident in every household. A Member of Parliament may have a vote in London because they are here in the middle of week. Other people may do business in the area, but they may not be in. It may be hard to find someone at home if they did not fill in their form, especially if they leave at 7 am and return at midnight, or whatever time the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Devine) gets in. Seriously, however, many people are rarely at home during normal working hours, so we need the resources to reach them.
	May I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), who chairs the Constitutional Affairs Committee, as it is important that that Select Committee holds the Government to account? May I pay tribute, too, through you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission, which makes sure that we have a regular opportunity to keep these matters on the agenda? The hon. Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice) has left the Chamber, but I wanted to recommend to the Minister what might be confusingly called the Prentice proposal on maximum registration—it might be better to call it the Pendle proposal. We would do well to think more carefully about providing a very small financial or other incentive so that people add their name to the electoral register. There is merit in such a proposal. Of course, it should happen automatically, and there is a legal obligation to register, but in reality, some people need a push. I am not suggesting that it is the whole answer, but it would be worth looking at.
	The Minister of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs, whose constituency borders mine and that of the Under-Secretary, was positive about something which, given the shortness of time, I shall call the Hughes proposal.  [ Interruption. ] No, I submitted it, and the right hon. and learned Lady said that the Department for Constitutional Affairs would look at it. We need a certain period every year—February is the logical month—in which there is a countdown to democracy, and a big registration day on, say, 28 February. It would be easy to remember that date, as it would be the same every year. There would be a big push on radio and television, and in the newspapers and in railway, tube and bus stations, outside schools and colleges—

Christopher Fraser: And in our prisons.

Simon Hughes: Seriously, it could take place everywhere.  [ Interruption. ] I heard that mischievous suggestion on the Back Benches. There should be an annual round of public encouragement. There is a good biblical precedent for such a practice, as people took part in the census 2,000 years ago. We should get into the habit of doing something similar. I remind the Minister that 31 January is embedded in many people's minds as the date on which they must submit their tax self-assessment. It is a simple date to remember, because it comes at the end of the month. In the final hours of 31 January this year, as in many previous years, people were running to the tax office near where I live to hand in their forms. People know the score, and the same would apply to electoral registration.

David Wilshire: I thought that I heard the hon. Gentleman say that he was in favour of financial inducements to vote. If so, how would he deal with someone seeking re-election who said, "I made sure you received some money for registering; now you had better vote for me."

Simon Hughes: I was saying that there might be a statutory form of inducement to register to vote, but it would not be legal to offer a financial inducement to vote.

David Wilshire: What is the point of registering if one does not vote?

Simon Hughes: We are all engaged in the debate about citizenship and the way in which we maximise participation in the political process—the Power report and others have made it clear that we are not doing very well at that. Such a measure would complete its passage through the House only if it commanded consensus, but we must maximise incentives to encourage people to participate in the process. We have discussed with the Minister other means of doing so, but the issue ought to be on the agenda. I shall not say more than another sentence about maximising turnout. Until and unless every vote counts equally, we will not maximise turnout, because many places are electoral deserts, given the nature of the contest. I urge Ministers not to forget the commitments that the Labour Government made in 1997, which they have not yet honoured.
	My final substantive point concerns the maximising of accuracy. My hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Nick Harvey) was indeed a signatory to the Council of Europe report, which was prompted by the request from the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) for an inquiry. It is perfectly reasonable that we should be held to account internationally, as opposed to nationally, but we must not misrepresent the position. Although there have been many allegations, the number of instances of proven electoral abuse—anyone can see them, as they are on the record in the report by the Committee on Standards in Public Life—is, as the Minister rightly suggested, small. The Committee sets out all the cases of which it is aware from 2001 to 2006; it does not pretend that it is a comprehensive record, as statistics are not collected centrally. The five parties that I have mentioned—all three major parties and two others—are involved and there appear to be 11 occasions on which there was a prosecution and a conviction. There appear to be four occasions on which there was no prosecution, although there was an investigation. When the report was published at the turn of the year, another five cases were recorded as under investigation. The numbers are not great, but several cases involved more than one person.

Philip Davies: It is the tip of the iceberg.

Simon Hughes: That may be so. I do not wish to underplay the problem, but I am trying to make sure that we get the balance right. Clearly, there is fraud, and there are many reasons for being concerned about that, but there are not hundreds of thousands of cases every year. Prosecution is difficult, I accept, because the evidence may be difficult to collect.
	In conclusion, may I urge the Minister to accept the committee's recommendations? Some of them are proposals to Government, but others are of a different nature. She knows that we support individual registration. We tried to secure it during the passage of the Electoral Administration Act 2006 between the Commons and the Lords, but we did not do so, and the Government got their way. The committee makes eight proposals, including three to the Electoral Commission. First, it suggests that the commission
	"undertake detailed research into the scale of...fraud".
	The Minister told us that the commission has started to do so, which is welcome. Secondly, the committee suggests that the commission should include in its statutory reports on this year's elections in Scotland, Wales and England
	"a specific section dealing with the impact of, and any problems encountered in the implementation of the new measures on postal voting. In light of this report the Government should consider similar measures in relation to registering immediately before an election as have been put in place for Northern Ireland".
	The third recommendation is that the Electoral Commission implementation plan should include a focus on measures to minimise under-registration. That is the commission's business, and as far as I know, it is working on all three proposals, although one of them will come back to the Government.
	There are four proposals specifically addressed to the Government, as well as three to the political parties, one of which is that we start discussions now in order to reach agreement on the precise form that the new system of registration may take and the measures needed to assure comprehensiveness and accuracy. Will the Minister announce at the end of the debate that the Government will invite Opposition parties to take part in those talks now, so that we can start the process as soon as possible? That would be a good sign.
	The second recommendation to political parties is the same as that made by the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire—that the Government accept, as the Opposition parties do, that individual registration should be implemented and should include at least one objective identifier. The hon. Gentleman suggested the national insurance number, but I do not think that that is the right one. In addition to signature, address and date of birth, or signature and date of birth, we need to find another identifier. The problem with national insurance is that many people do not know their numbers, and one can get a number off the shelf, as it were. That is not an infallible system.
	The last recommendation for political parties is that if the new arrangements in Northern Ireland, including the abolition of the annual canvass, are successful, they should be adopted as part of the system of registration in the rest of the United Kingdom.
	The Government are asked to do two further things—first, to make it a requirement that the Electoral Commission's views on proposed primary and secondary legislation on electoral issues should accompany any such draft legislation. That is similar to the proposal that I made. There must be a means of allowing the House to see what the independent body recommends, so that Government cannot try to put an alternative proposal, suggesting that theirs has greater merit.
	Finally and crucially, the Committee recommends that a decision should be made and legislation should be developed to implement a system of individual voter registration immediately following the next general election, or by 2010 at the latest. The time frame is "within one year", meaning that that should be agreed and the necessary legislation passed within one year of the report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life.
	I hope that Ministers will say that they are now willing to accept that there is one other important body that supports the Electoral Commission, the Opposition parties, some though not all Labour Members, and many bodies outside. If we are to achieve maximum accuracy of electoral registers, we need to move to individual registration within a year of the report. I hope that Ministers will be positive about that. I know that it is difficult and I know that there is some opposition on the Labour Back Benches, but I hope that we will see some movement so that we get maximum effectiveness, maximum accuracy, maximum turnout and maximum participation in elections, which after all is the only way that people can feel that the democracy that we claim is theirs as well.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I remind the House that there is a 10-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches, which applies from now on.

Roger Godsiff: The integrity of the electoral system is the cornerstone of a properly functioning democracy. Prior to the Birmingham judgment, I raised in the House what happened in Birmingham when we had postal voting on demand. I pointed out rather graphically that in one ward the number of people applying for a postal vote out of 20,000 electors started at 690, and five weeks later stood at 9,600. I am glad the Minister and the Department have produced proposals to address these matters, and in general I welcome them, although in my opinion individual voter registration must be the way forward. I hope that in due course that will happen.
	Postal voting has been discussed this evening, but as has been pointed out, only 12 per cent. of voters apply for or participate in postal voting. The vast majority still prefer the traditional way of casting their vote. The hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) said that it is not unreasonable to expect that in a democracy there should be free, fair, secure elections and that voters should have confidence in them. He is right, but I would add that people who choose not to cast postal votes ought to be able to go along to a polling station without harassment, peer pressure or intimidation, or misinformation being given out when they arrive there.
	It is fortuitous that the debate is taking place tonight. I tabled a private Member's Bill, which was down for Second Reading last Friday, to try and address the issue that I intend to raise now. Unfortunately, after five hours of excellent debate on the benefits of respite care, that Bill was talked out and mine was never reached. I am sure the Minister would have been delighted if we had had a proper debate on it. Although it was only a two-clause Bill, the Government objected to it receiving a Second Reading.
	The Bill suggested that people should not be allowed to campaign within 250 yd of a polling station on election day. The definition of campaigning was
	"the promotion or distribution of any literature associated with election candidates, political parties or associated organisations...the use of audio equipment, whether stationary or mobile, for the propagation of messages relating to an election; or...oral communication for the purpose of eliciting voting intentions or influencing the casting of a vote."
	That was all. If someone contravened that provision, they would be fined up to £5,000. The Government said no to the Bill; I was trying to be helpful, but the Government did not want the Bill to proceed to Second Reading.
	When I first became involved in politics, there was a clear unwritten convention that on polling day one did not take a loudspeaker anywhere near a polling station. One did not hand out literature at the entrances to polling stations. All that tellers did was take numbers. Indeed, when I was first a teller, party political allegiances were not printed on ballot papers, yet if an elector asked which candidate was which, I could not tell them. I had to tell them to go and speak to the polling clerk.
	I accept that that might still apply in certain leafy parts of the country. Indeed, it might even apply in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Minister, in areas such as Blackheath, St. Margaret's, Hither Green, Manor Lee, St. Mildred's, Whitefoot and Downham. There probably is no such campaigning on polling day in those areas, but it does happen in inner-city Birmingham.
	What is the problem and why do I keep raising it? I have previously referred to the debate in Westminster Hall initiated almost six years ago by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes), who was supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon). They both highlighted the way in which supporters of various parties congregated outside polling station entrances to apply pressure to, intimidate, and attempt to confuse, voters, especially those who had only limited knowledge of the English language. Tellingly, my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East concluded:
	"I hope that the Minister will ask his staff or the Electoral Commission to look at tightening the law, especially on harassment and intimidation of voters who are trying to get into a polling station. I realise that it is difficult...However, people can be kept away from the entrance to the polling station."
	That is exactly what my Bill was intended to do.
	The response from the Minister was to say that
	"the appropriate way to pursue allegations of illegal and possibly criminal practices is through the law." —[ Official Report, Westminster Hall, 4 July 2001; Vol. 371, c. 102-9WH.]
	That was it. He then went on to talk about the virtues of postal voting on demand and there the matter rested.
	I raised the issue again in a debate on the integrity of the electoral system in June 2005. In response, the Minister said:
	"He also made a powerful case about extending the rights of arrest outside polling stations, and I can assure him that we are genuinely consulting on that."—[ Official Report, 22 June 2005; Vol. 435, c. 911.]
	Twenty months later, nothing has happened. We still have the same problems that I have identified time and again.
	I cannot understand why the problems have not been resolved. Anyone who knows inner-city, multicultural areas knows that that old conventions no longer exist. My Bill had the boring title, Polling Stations (Regulation) Bill, but it could have been called the "Let People Vote in Peace Bill". I cannot see why the Government would not allow it to receive a Second Reading. Better still, they could make their own proposals, perhaps for a pilot scheme. Why do electors in my constituency and in other areas of Birmingham, and in other multicultural areas, have to go through a cacophony of sound, intimidation, pressure and harassment just to get into the polling station? That is completely unnecessary.
	Of course, the Bill was not discussed on Friday, but I can imagine some of the objections to it that would be raised by the civil service. First, people would argue that there is not a problem. There is a problem; otherwise the matter would not keep being raised. Then they would say, "Well, if there is a problem, all that your Bill would do is transfer it somewhere else"—in other words, their policy would be to acknowledge that there is a problem but they would not want to say anything about it. Then they would say that the Bill is unnecessary because current law allows the police to deal with the problem, but that is not so. No doubt another argument would be that it would be unenforceable, or that it would cost more money. Why would it, given that more and more police are currently having to be deployed to react to incidents?
	Those civil servants then might say that the Bill would interfere with traditional campaigning. It would not—there would still be an election with five weeks of campaigning, and there could still be campaigning on the day, except within 250 yards of a polling station. Not one single elector of mine has said, "Mr. Godsiff—don't take away my right to have my door knocked on time and again during the day because I live within 250 yards of a polling station." That is a non-argument.
	Some might argue that the Bill would interfere with the traditional role of tellers. It is interesting that the Electoral Commission, which has not been helpful over this—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman has had his 10 minutes.

John Horam: I hope that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook and Small Heath (Mr. Godsiff) will have a further opportunity to introduce his Bill, which sounded interesting. I can imagine that it would gain considerable support on both sides of the Chamber, although the Government side is rather thinly spread at the moment.
	Given the importance of the subject, I was disappointed by the Minister's speech, in the course of which she said that the electoral system was as secure as it is possible to be. That is demonstrably untrue and will remain so while we have household registration, which no other country in the world has, apart from Zimbabwe. We should move towards individual registration with personal identifiers. Until then, it will not be as secure as it is possible to be, and the Minister was incredibly complacent to assert that.
	The Minister accused the Opposition of scaremongering. My former colleague, Dame Marion Roe, investigated this issue on her own initiative and revealed, after a lot of painstaking research, that 18 per cent. of the people on the register in Brentford and Isleworth were not eligible to be on it—a huge proportion of the electorate. Was she scaremongering? Is Michael Pinto-Duschinsky a scaremonger? He is a senior lecturer in politics at Brunel university, and he recently wrote an article in  The Times pointing out that according to the research that he has carried out, with no help from the Government, there have been 390 cases of alleged electoral fraud in the past seven years. There have also been eight cases of councillors and others being put in prison as a result of electoral fraud. As the Minister said, some of those cases may not involve the kind of electoral fraud that we are talking about, but some will—she simply does not know. He has been digging away independently and trying to get at the facts, as we all are. For the Minister to accuse us of scaremongering is demeaning to the debate; we are merely trying to get at the facts, and the Government have played little part in doing that.
	Why has electoral fraud happened? First, as my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) said in his admirable opening speech, the Government have pushed voter participation at all costs, particularly in relation to postal voting, and they have taken risks. As the Electoral Commission pointed out repeatedly, it is admirable to push up voter registration and participation—we all want that—but proper safeguards must be put in, and the Government failed to do that. We need individual voter registration or more personal identifiers. The Government always cite the fact that there was an 11 per cent. drop in voter registration when individual voter registration was implemented in Northern Ireland. However, as the Committee on Standards in Public Life pointed out, the major reason for that was the simultaneous abolition of the carry-forward provisions whereby if someone did not re-register, their registration was carried forward for 12 months. That practice was dropped. As the Committee on Standards in Public Life pointed out, the abolition of the carry forward was the major reason why there was a sudden diminution in the number of people registering in Northern Ireland. It was nothing to do with the imposition of individual registration.

David Wilshire: Just because voting goes down when we check up on these things, it does not automatically mean that we are stopping those who would otherwise vote from doing so. It might just mean that we have got rid of the fraudsters. Does my hon. Friend agree?

John Horam: Indeed. That is the important point. The primacy of fraud should be recognised. It is very important to increase voter participation, but it is even more important to prevent fraud. That is the fundamental point at issue here. As long as the Government do not agree, we will not make progress on dealing with fraud.
	It is also the case, as my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, South (Mr. Binley) pointed out, that the electoral registration officers have too much to do and too few resources to do it with. That is a simple matter of fact. People put forward their name for the electoral register, but there is really no check on whether they are eligible to be on it. In many cases, as my former colleague, Dame Marion Roe, pointed out, they simply are on the register when they should not be there—a disgraceful situation, which needs to be checked out more thoroughly.
	The Government have not handled such issues well. Moreover, they are still attempting to increase voter participation while at the same time taking risks. They are, for example, proceeding with an experiment, which is being trialled in various places, to increase electronic voting. That means that the Electoral Commission, which has a statutory responsibility to monitor all those experiments, has even more work to do in dealing with issues of research, fraud and so forth. That is what the Government are trying to do: at every turn, they are putting their desire to increase voter participation first, while putting the need to tackle fraud second. In my view, they should be at least be treated equally.

Philip Davies: Does my hon. Friend agree that the all-postal voting trial caused considerable damage to the electoral system in the eyes of the public, particularly in Bradford? Is he as disappointed as I am at the fact that the Government will not rule out having all-postal vote trials in the future?

John Horam: I am sorry to hear that they will not rule it out. Frankly, it was a fiasco, which shows once again that the Government are not prepared to put in the necessary safeguards. They are taking needless risks with fraud.
	The Labour party gains a huge advantage from the present parliamentary boundary system. It won 93 more MPs in England at the last general election, yet the Conservative party got more votes. That is the fact of the matter. The Labour party has that huge advantage and is now trying to pile on top of that a further advantage derived from the nature of electoral registration. Is it so lacking in confidence about its prospects under the current Chancellor at the next general election that it has to try to rig the system outrageously in favour of its own side? What this Labour party is up to is truly astonishing.

Nicholas Winterton: Could my hon. Friend put a question to the Government for me? Is it more important to have an election result that is true and can be trusted or one that could have been subject to massive fraud? Which is more important: an electoral register that is correct or a system whereby postal voting can be massively abused, as has been the case in a number of constituencies such as some in Birmingham?

John Horam: Perhaps the Minister will respond to that question when he winds up the debate.
	What can be done about the problem? All would agree—perhaps even the Minister would agree—that we need some proper research to find out the extent of fraud. I have no doubt that that is what we really need, and I am pleased to see that the Minister seems to be mouthing a yes. The Electoral Commission is putting in hand research to investigate the extent of fraud and I commend it for doing so. So far, however, we have had precious little information on the subject. It is a difficult matter, but I believe that the Electoral Commission should undertake that research as soon as possible. If it does not do so, we would be unlikely to accept the explanation that there are too many difficulties standing in the way of that research.
	I note that the Electoral Commission is also undertaking research into the performance standards of electoral registration officers. The fact is that those standards vary greatly. In some local authorities, for example, only 60 per cent. of those eligible to vote are on the register, while in other areas, the figure is 90 per cent. Why is there such a huge discrepancy? If the Minister really wanted to do something to increase voter participation and prevent fraud—to be fair to her, she has done so to a certain extent by allocating £21 million more—she could help electoral registration officers to do their job more diligently. If we do not have people on the ground floor carrying out proper checks on what is going on, we shall not have a proper trusted system.

Bob Spink: Does my hon. Friend share my concern that electoral registration officers are a law unto themselves? Their interpretation of the law and the Electoral Commission rules cannot be challenged by the police, the courts or anyone else. Is it not time that we had consistency in the way in which EROs accept the expert advice of the Electoral Commission and apply election law, so that they can be held to account?

John Horam: My hon. Friend makes a very sound point. Indeed, that matter has been seized by the Electoral Commission, which is appointing regional officers to look after the country. I welcome the fact that there will therefore be more standardisation under that system.
	Perhaps I may suggest a further task for the Electoral Commission. It has been pointed out not only by academics, politicians and other observers but by the four boundary commissions that we need to look at the rules governing the review of parliamentary boundaries. Under the present legislation, it is the duty of the Electoral Commission to look into that. It is capable of grasping that duty, and it should do so.
	The Electoral Commission was set up by the present Government, and I commend them for that. It is vital that we have an independent body to look into all these matters in a non-partisan way. However, the Government should then follow the matters through and accept the findings and research of the Electoral Commission. They have not done so, and that is a complete disgrace.

David Wilshire: It might help the few of us who are here if I explain my involvement in this issue. I happen to be one of the Members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe who represents the British Parliament. As I said to the Minister a while ago, I also happen to be the Member of that Assembly who tabled the motion that has resulted in the formal investigation by the Council of Europe that is referred to in today's motion. It is not often that the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe finds its way on to the Floor of this House, which is a pity, because it does a lot of important work, despite what some of my colleagues sometimes say. It does important work, and it happens not to be the European Union. That enables me to prove that I am a good European without having to enthuse about the European Union.
	Let me explain how the investigation came about, because it is relevant to the debate and highlights the depths to which the Government have allowed us to sink, when it comes to an outside body coming in to investigate us. On 20 March 1952, the United Kingdom signed the first protocol of the European convention on human rights. Despite what some people think, the convention is a Council of Europe matter, not a European Union matter. Article 3 of the protocol places signatories of the protocol under an obligation to hold
	"free elections...which will ensure the free expression of the opinion of the people in the choice of the legislature."
	Having signed that, all was fine so far as the United Kingdom was concerned—so far as I can judge—until 2001, when the Government decided to introduce postal voting on demand. They did that irrespective of a huge amount of anxiety and concern on the part of all political parties, and of voters and academics. Indeed, everybody said, "If you want to encourage people to apply for a postal vote and therefore find it easier to participate, okay, but don't do it like this." Those expressions of concern predicted that the result of what the Government were doing and how they were doing it would be a huge risk of fraud. Predictably and inevitably, that is precisely what happened, which is what triggered action from the Electoral Commission.
	In June 2003, the Electoral Commission called for robust scrutiny arrangements. The Government promptly ignored it. In August 2004, it repeated its call and the Government repeated their decision to ignore it. Again, in April 2005, the Electoral Commission repeated its call. That time, the Government were shamed into action. The result of that action was the Electoral Administration Act 2006. It was too little, too late. As others have said, it ignored the fundamental recommendation of individual voter registration.
	All the legislation does is require a voter to provide a signature and his date of birth if he wants a postal vote. It is still ridiculously easy to get a postal vote fraudulently. Let me give the House an example. Immediately after Christmas, I moved house. I applied to be added to the electoral register in the new constituency. By February, I had been added. I was not asked to prove who I was. No check was made on where I had come from. No questions were asked about my entitlement to vote. I was simply told that I had been added to the register.
	I promptly applied for a postal vote, and it has been agreed to. No checks have been made on me. It suddenly occurred to me that if I had put down three other names when I announced that I had arrived at my address, I would be the proud possessor of four postal votes. It is crazily, stupidly easy to defraud the system because the Government will not do the one thing that will stop that. Despite the Electoral Commission's urging and despite the growing evidence, the Government still refuse to act properly.
	In a 10-minute speech, I cannot begin to list the evidence that is accumulating, although I can give a couple of examples. In April 2005, when declaring two ward results invalid, a judge said:
	"The systems to deal with fraud are not working well. They are not working badly. The fact is that there are no systems to deal realistically with fraud and there never have been. Until there are, fraud will continue unabated."
	In the same month, another judge, when dealing with a case, said that the evidence of electoral fraud would "disgrace a banana republic". That is the depth to which the Government have brought us. Also in April that year, a Blackburn councillor was convicted of stealing 233 postal votes. Since then, the police have launched a huge number of investigations. The Minister complacently said that that does not amount to much. If she is right, why have the Council of Europe rapporteurs received invitations from the Metropolitan police and the Crown Prosecution Service to meet them so that they can pass on what they have discovered in their inquiries in this country?
	Along with many other Members of the House, I have done my best through the normal channels to persuade the Government to act properly, but they have not done so. In the end, I decided that I had to try to find other ways to do something about this. I turned my mind to that and quickly realised that the Council of Europe offered an opportunity. I did not go down that route lightly, and criticising one's own country in an international forum is not something that I relish, but I believe passionately in democracy. I also believe that I have a duty to help to stamp it out.  [Interruption.] A slip of the tongue at this time of night is perhaps excusable. That is before my supper, I hasten to add.
	Let me make it absolutely clear that I believe that it is crucial that I, with everybody else, do my best to stamp out fraud wherever we find it. That is why I am one of two Council of Europe rapporteurs monitoring the development of democracy in Albania. How on earth could I, in all conscience, go to Albania, talk to Albanian parliamentarians and politicians and urge them to tackle fraud in their own country when there is fraud here? I would be a hypocrite if I ignored fraud here and then talked to the Albanians about it, so I make no apologies for using the route that I did.
	That is why tonight, in this country, a former German Social Democrat justice Minister and a Polish Christian Democrat Senator—who, interestingly, was born and brought up in the north of England and so knows our systems inside out and upside down—are both conducting a formal investigation into the British electoral system, with particular reference to postal vote fraud. It takes some doing for a member state of the Council of Europe to be brought to that level; it puts us in the same sort of category as basket cases such as Belarus. Is that where the Government want us to be?
	In case people still doubt the validity of the Council of Europe, I should say that I—and I hope anybody else who takes democracy seriously—hope that the presence of those two parliamentarians from two other countries proves that this really is a serious matter for this country. Even if the Government do not, I welcome their inquiries and am pleased that they are prepared to help us. If the Government will not help us, we must get help from anywhere and from anybody who will do their best to stop us being worse than a banana republic. The Government probably could not be bothered, or do not know how to rescue us, so I welcome help from wherever we can get it.

George Galloway: Like the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire), I wish that I had more than 10 minutes, because much needs to be said. Complacency is a fatal flaw in politics, yet it has been the hallmark of the Government's approach this evening—and, indeed, during all previous discussions and debates on this subject.
	Listening to the Minister tonight, one would not think that in addition to welcoming Polish plumbers, builders, bus drivers and vegetable pickers, we should now be forced to welcome a Polish parliamentarian to investigate large-scale voting fraud here, in the mother of all Parliaments. There is no time for me to cover all the issues that I would like to deal with, so I shall stick to postal voting if I may. By introducing lifelong postal voting on demand, the Government have fundamentally undermined one of the key democratic rights fought for and won in this country during the past 150 years: the right to cast the vote in secret. That was a central demand of the Chartists, forerunners of the Labour party, precisely to put an end to the bribery, corruption and intimidation of voters by the rich and powerful.
	When, hard on the heels of the Second Reform Act of 1867, Gladstone introduced the Ballot Act 1872 to enshrine that right in law, that was a vital step forward for democracy in Britain, but it is being recklessly tossed aside. The claimed justification for the changes to the postal voting system is that they will increase voter participation. Of that there is not one jot of evidence, but there is plenty of evidence of how wide open to corruption they have made the political system.

Bob Spink: Does the hon. Gentleman believe that a better way to improve voter participation would be to reintroduce integrity to the Government?

George Galloway: I shall not go down that road, because the Conservative party started the deterioration of Government integrity in this country. I would not want it to be thought that I am in any way sympathetic to Conservatives just because I shall be voting with them this evening.
	Trade unions affiliated to new Labour sent out postal vote application forms by the hundreds of thousands to their members and others, and asked them to return the forms not to the town hall charged with managing the election, but to their trade union headquarters, to a post office box hundreds of miles away from the person filling in the form. There was no good reason for that, but there are plenty of bad reasons on which one could speculate. It is but a short step from that manipulation of the electoral process, which is none the less legal, to the fraudulent application for postal votes by people other than the voters themselves, with the instruction that the vote should be sent to an address other than the registered address of the voter.
	In Tower Hamlets last May, we witnessed the most corrupt election held in Britain since 1872. Hundreds of votes were purloined by crooks applying for postal votes and getting them redirected to an address sometimes just doors away from the registered address of the voter. Whole blocks of flats woke up to discover that every one of their residents had applied for a postal vote to be redirected to another address without their knowledge. Some 2,800 postal vote applications were delivered to the town hall in Tower Hamlets in the last hours of the last day, and many were brought in by sitting councillors. A total of 18,732 postal votes were registered in Tower Hamlets: a vast increase on the vast increase that had occurred at the general election the year before. Almost 15 per cent. of those were delivered on the last afternoon. A total of 946 postal votes were redirected to addresses that were not the registered address of the voter, with considerably more as a percentage in the wards where new Labour councillors were under pressure.
	For the entertainment of the Chamber, let me say that, despite all this, our party defeated the Labour mayor, the Labour deputy mayor, the Labour leader, the Labour deputy leader, the Labour housing convenor, the Labour deputy housing convenor—I could go on, but the House would lose patience. In one ward, new Labour Councillor Bill Turner, who won by just 38 votes, himself had postal votes redirected to the address at which he said that he was living. The system is so utterly without basic democratic protection that it is virtually impossible to detect fraud with a sufficient degree of proof to bring the matter successfully before an election court, where, as might not be known, one must demonstrate that the fraud would have changed the result of the election. Fraud can therefore be demonstrated on a significant scale, but if it is not enough to change the course of the election, the matter is simply thrown out.
	Two petitions were accepted, and were prayed in aid by Labour Members. But we were only allowed to have the postal votes for the winning Labour candidate examined, and the only check that we could carry out was a forensic examination and comparison of the signature. None the less, the handwriting expert agreed by all sides in the petition identified 30 per cent. of the postal votes as questionable, and believed that the signatures were probably from different hands in almost half those votes—and that was just sampling 300 postal votes out of almost 19,000.
	On top of that—this is where the issue of complacency arises—a major police investigation into voting fraud in Tower Hamlets is ongoing, and has engaged four police officers full-time for the past 10 months. No charges have yet been brought—I do not know if they will be, as it is so easy to subvert the system—but Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman has already commented, on the basis of that investigation, that postal votes are particularly susceptible to fraud. Despite all the talk of there not being many prosecutions, the Crown Prosecution Service has confirmed that 390 cases of alleged electoral offences have occurred over the past seven years, and not all in inner cities. In Reading, only two of 46 postal vote applications examined were found to be authentic. Richard Mawrey QC, who has been much quoted this evening, looked at ballots in the Birmingham city wards of Aston and nearby Bordesley Green. He said that there were at least 1,000 forged votes in Aston and 1,500 to 2,000 in Bordesley Green. The system of postal voting on demand is leading to a banana republic perception.
	Like the Minister, I am a former Labour party official. I have been fighting elections for almost 40 years, almost always on the winning side. I know about elections. Now, for the first time in my political life, people ask me, "How do we know that they are counting these votes fairly? How do we know they are not rigging the election?" I am not saying that that is happening, but there is a systematic undermining of confidence in the electoral process, caused largely by postal vote fraud.
	Councils share the responsibility with Government. Richard Mawrey QC considered our two petitions—the only two that we could get in front of the election court. I hope that the Minister, who is laughing, will listen to what he said about a new Labour council just a few miles from Westminster, held by one seat that was secured only by this type of corruption. In response to our petitions, Richard Mawrey QC declared that the evidence that we presented showed "disturbing" and "suspicious" signs of "classic postal voting fraud". He went on to say that a regime that allows electors to acquire postal voting ballots "on demand" has been
	"an open invitation to fraud",
	which has proved to be "distressingly easy".
	Yet in the wake of those comments by a Queen's counsel, Tower Hamlets council, with its Labour majority of one, issued a press release that was such a falsification that Andrew Gilligan—remember him? The Minister shakes her head. He was the only journalist to tell us the truth about the Government's lies on Iraq. He said in the  Evening Standard that the council's press release was a pack of lies. Who presided over all this? A woman called Christine Gilbert, whose intimate connections to new Labour are so personal that I would not like to go down that route. Suffice it to say that her reward for presiding over the tower of corruption in Tower Hamlets was to be made the chief inspector of schools at Ofsted. God save our children. God save the integrity of their examination results.

Daniel Kawczynski: Much has been said about fraud, but the other problem is when constituents are unaware of their rights and they are prevented from casting their postal votes by things that are not specifically fraud. Let me give the Minister one example—probably the most frustrating case that I encountered in Shrewsbury during the 2005 general election.
	A lovely elderly lady who lives in Hanwood, a village south of Shrewsbury, had voted in every election for the past 70 years and she was looking forward to voting for me in 2005—she had a large "Vote Conservative" poster in her garden. She had received her postal ballot for the county council elections, but not for the general election, and with one day to go when I met her, it was too late for her to reapply to obtain another postal vote. She did not realise that, because she had applied for a postal vote, she could not go to the polling booth to cast her vote. She was not the only one affected by that frustrating problem: many other constituents in the village of Hanwood did not receive their postal votes. I am not saying that that was the result of deliberate fraud—it was perhaps the result of an error by the Post Office—but those people did not receive their postal ballots, and in the present system they could not simply go to the polling booth to cast their vote.
	Shrewsbury is to pilot various electronic voting processes, and I hope that the Minister will tell us how much she will give Shrewsbury and Atcham borough council for piloting those schemes. I very much hope that the Government will pay for them, rather than the local Shrewsbury taxpayer.
	Our borough council is excellent and is doing an excellent job. I have confidence in the chief executive, Robin Hooper, as a good returning officer; he is accountable to my local council and is part of our community. The one problem with the Government trying to force unitary status on us is that we will no longer have just one council and one electoral officer. One person will cover the whole of Shropshire and could have to deal with four or five constituencies on one night. No chief executive can properly manage on one night an election involving four or five constituencies—that is absolutely ludicrous. One chief executive of one borough council should be the electoral officer on the night in question.
	I am very pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) secured this debate, because there are a couple of related issues that I feel passionately about that I want to raise. My hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) mentioned his passion for democracy, and, I, too, came into politics because of my genuine passion for democracy. There have been allegations in Shrewsbury against certain Labour councillors who work in our local post office; indeed, I have received these allegations myself repeatedly. What can I do if they are anonymous? However, the situation is imprinted on one's mind. One ultimately thinks, "Yes, they work in the post office. They could, as Labour party activists, play some role in manipulating postal votes." What is the Minister going to do to ensure that Members of Parliament such as I can have confidence in the process?
	Now, I find out that the Labour parliamentary candidate selected to stand against me also works in the sorting office at Shrewsbury post office.

Jim Devine: Will the hon. Gentleman make it clear what he is suggesting? He appears to be suggesting that these post office workers, for whom there is a clear disciplinary procedure, could be stealing letters. That is a very serious allegation to make.

Daniel Kawczynski: Yes, but if the hon. Gentleman reads tomorrow's  Hansard, he will realise that I have not made such an allegation. I am saying that I have received these allegations—some anonymously and others not—from people who say that they work at the post office. This is what my constituents who work for the post office are telling me about Labour councillors who work at the post office. I am not saying this—my constituents are—but what am I meant to think? I am obviously concerned if my constituents are making such allegations against Labour councillors.
	Now I find, as I said, that the Labour party has selected somebody who works at Shrewsbury sorting office to stand against me. I am starting to get allegations that he, when he stood to be a councillor, was also implicated in various fraudulent practices. I am not saying that; my constituents are.

Jim Devine: I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way again. As MPs, we get confidential information all the time about criminal activity in our constituencies. I have always reported such information directly to the police and asked them to investigate. Has the hon. Gentleman done the same?

Daniel Kawczynski: At this stage, I have not; I am still compiling the evidence, and if anything can be proved, I shall do so. Of course, if such people remain anonymous, it is very difficult to prove anything, as I was trying to say.
	I have respectfully asked the Minister what guidance she will give to such people, if they work in post offices, to show that they should not in any way be involved even in touching postal ballots. She sent me a rather inappropriate reply. She said that I should not be raising these matters because I have no evidence. However, I want the Minister to tell me what guidance the Government are giving to Labour candidates who work for the Post Office. Will she give me an assurance that during a general election such candidates will not be able to touch postal ballots and that they will be excluded from the post office?

Simon Hughes: Like the hon. Gentleman, I represent a broad community, which includes post offices, and I think that his comments are inappropriate. The only way to deal with such matters is to do as I have always done, which is to use the Post Office complaints procedure. I have never received such complaints made on a party political basis, but any allegation that a postal worker has done something wrong should go through the proper complaints structure. The hon. Gentleman should use that process, and only if some real substance is found should he bring the matter here.

Daniel Kawczynski: I wholly disagree. The House of Commons is our Chamber where we should discuss such issues and where Members can receive reassurances from Ministers. I stand by my comments to the Minister. I want her to tell me what guidance the Government are giving. She mentioned at our meeting that only a few people working in sorting offices would stand as parliamentary candidates, but I do not care whether there are a lot or a few—I want guidance from the Government. What will those people be told?

Bridget Prentice: At my meeting with the hon. Gentleman I explained in considerable detail what should be done. As the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) and my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Devine) said, if serious allegations have been made, there are appropriate channels for dealing with them. The hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) is making serious allegations and they should be put through that process. It is not for him to find the evidence—that is the job of the police. It is for him to ask those who have made the allegations, whether anonymously or giving their name, to go to the police and to be prepared to make a statement. At our meeting, and in a subsequent letter, I told the hon. Gentleman that guidance was available, through the Electoral Commission, on how all candidates—not just Labour candidates—should conduct themselves during elections.

Daniel Kawczynski: I understand what the Minister says, but she has still not explained the Government's policy on post office workers.

Nicholas Winterton: May I suggest that my hon. Friend put this question to the Minister—is she satisfied with the security of the postal vote system? Sadly, I have not been in the Chamber for the whole debate, but I have been here for quite a percentage of it and it appears to me that grave reservations have been expressed on both sides of the House about the security of the postal vote system. That concern is shared by the Electoral Commission. If my hon. Friend put that question to the Minister, he would, I hope, receive a response.

Daniel Kawczynski: I wholly agree. Postal voting has given rise to serious issues and the Government are being far too flippant about them.
	I shall finish by speaking about the armed forces. In an intervention, I mentioned that many soldiers, families of soldiers and service personnel based at Copthorne—a major Army barracks in Shrewsbury—told me after the general election that they had hoped to vote for me, and for the Conservative party, but regrettably they had not received their postal ballot papers. It is important that our armed forces, wherever in the world they are serving, have the right to vote and to take part in general elections. I very much hope that when the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland sums up he will give us an indication of what the Government are doing to ensure that the large number of service personnel who could not vote at the last election can do so at the next one.

Nicholas Winterton: I had not intended to speak, but I have been moved by a number of the speeches made during this short debate. My few remarks will be directed at the fraud that is clearly taking place in postal voting.
	The hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook and Small Heath (Mr. Godsiff) represents an area that I know well from a past career in business in Birmingham in the west midlands. He expressed very grave concerns and the Minister must take them seriously. Members on both sides, including Opposition Members who are not members of the Conservative and Unionist party or even the Liberal Democrat party, have put forward to the House clear evidence that fraud is taking place.
	I believe in our democratic system. However, I also believe that the Government have moved far too soon towards granting postal votes on a "When you want it" basis and before there was any really secure system to ensure that the voting system could not be massively abused. In the north of England, the west midlands and London the postal vote system has clearly been abused.
	I intervened to ask my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Horam) whether he would prefer a system in which everyone had total trust in the election result or one that facilitated more and more people taking a postal vote when the postal vote system could be abused. I hope that, in his winding-up speech, the Minister will reply to that point. I am sure that he should say to the House that he would prefer a democratic decision that is respected and trusted and that is not the result of abuse, rather than an electoral system that is subject to abuse.

David Wilshire: I am sure that my hon. Friend is absolutely right. Does he agree that for most of our lives we lived in a country where almost everybody we spoke to took it for granted that we had an uncorrupt system? Indeed, we were proud when people said to us that this country had one of the best election systems in the world. Yet, now this Government have brought that system into disrepute.

Nicholas Winterton: I am trying to be balanced and responsible. I am concerned about the House and ensuring that those elected to it from all the political parties are elected by votes that can be trusted. People must believe that there is a true result to an election and that councillors in Birmingham, the north-west and London have not been elected by votes that are the result of fraud. The Government must admit that a number of cases have brought the whole electoral process, particularly that for postal votes, into disrepute. We must ensure that we have a system that is trusted.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) talked about those who had applied for a postal vote and had not received it. Clearly at the last election, there were many problems with those responsible for the postal vote system. In my constituency of Macclesfield, we had severe problems and a number of people had to have votes delivered to them by the borough council.  [ Interruption.] I must tell my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham that I am well aware of the time that the contributions from Back Benchers are supposed to end in order to allow time for the Government to respond. I do not need to be reminded.

Daniel Kawczynski: The Whip told me to do it.

Nicholas Winterton: I do not need to be reminded even by the Opposition Whip, my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood). He is a good friend and a man for whom I have immense respect.
	I hope that the Minister will accept that Opposition Members want an electoral system that can be relied upon, that is trusted and that people believe in. Currently, the postal vote system does not meet those criteria. People are unhappy, and that point has been expressed by Members on both sides. Will the Minister indicate that the Government understand the concerns of the Electoral Commission, let alone Members on both sides, that action needs to be taken if the postal vote system is to be secure and trusted? Democracy is important, but it must be based on sound values and sound procedures. As I said, the Government have advanced the postal vote system without the security that is necessary. Can the Minister assure us that that point will be dealt with and that security will be 100 per cent. in the future?

Jonathan Djanogly: Today's has been an important debate that has addressed perhaps the most basic and fundamental issues underpinning our democratic system: the integrity of the system's mechanics and its methods of avoiding fraud. We recognise and welcome the Liberal Democrats' support for our motion. The hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) said much that we agree with, until he got to proportional representation. We are debating the system that governs the public's one opportunity to dictate how and by whom their country or their local authority should be run. Free, fair and secure elections underpin the foundations of our democratic society.
	The Minister of State said on Second Reading of the Electoral Administration Bill in 2005:
	"all is not well with our democracy."—[ Official Report, 25 October 2005; Vol. 438, c. 193.]
	But despite the Electoral Administration Act 2006, a new range of well-publicised examples of fraud have hit our electoral system. It is becoming increasingly evident that the concept of the great British democracy is under threat and that all is still not well in our democracy. That is of great concern to the Conservative party. The Electoral Commission has warned since 2002 of the need for reform, but it has become clear that the actions taken by the Government have failed to tackle the problem robustly. The Committee on Standards in Public Life has shown that, since 2001, some 342 cases of electoral malpractice have been reported by the police to the Crown Prosecution Service. My hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Horam) was correct to note that it was simply unrealistic of the Minister to accuse us of scaremongering, although I agree that more research on fraud is needed.

David Taylor: Yet again the figure of 342 is bandied around. Do not the great majority of the cases relate to electoral imprints on communications, campaign methods in the election concerned and allegations about the level of expenditure undertaken by candidates? A relatively small number of cases—they need to be investigated—relate to actual fraud. Is that not the case?

Jonathan Djanogly: The Minister and her Back Benchers are too complacent on this issue.  [ Interruption. ] Yes. Looking at Tower Hamlets, Scotland Yard Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman said that it is the view of the Scotland Yard special prosecution unit
	"that widespread use of postal votes has opened up a whole new area to be exploited by the fraudster, and the opportunity has been taken."
	We must not be complacent in that regard. It is a fundamental tenet of our democratic society that the public should have confidence in the electoral system. However, since the introduction of postal voting on demand there has been a growing perception—expressed by my hon. Friends the Members for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) and for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton)—that the British electoral system, a previously exemplary model in which electoral fraud was virtually non-existent, is now considered dangerously susceptible to attack.

Simon Hughes: I quoted the figures from the report from the Committee on Standards in Public Life. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the latest figures that we have authenticated are those in that report and that there are fewer than 20 investigations in total, either completed or under way? There is a problem, but exaggeration does not help anybody.

Jonathan Djanogly: The hon. Gentleman and I stated different figures. There are figures and there is a serious problem. The Government are making light of the problem, whatever those figures may be.
	Although we have been supportive of many of the measures so far implemented by the Government—in particular, the new offences created to deter electoral fraud—as the facts stand it is becoming clear that those measures will still fall far short of the mark. The Government have even messed up the implementation of their inadequate legislation. In response to a question tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald), the Minister admitted, as she did this evening, that the key provisions in the Electoral Administration Act 2006 on the requirement for signatures as verifiers in polling stations had, in effect, been put on ice because, apparently, the Act did not provide for a clear sanction of withholding a ballot paper. Yes, the Act provides for the piloting of personal identifiers, but we have seen a half-hearted approach to enforcement by a Government who are failing to realise, or at least admit to, their fundamental errors with regard to protecting democracy in this country.
	Evidence gathered by the Committee on Standards in Public Life shows that the system in place is seriously flawed and that it will still fail to protect the arrangements for postal voting from fraud. For example, information on registration forms provided to electoral registration officers is taken at face value. There is little or no checking of completed registration forms to ensure their authenticity, and there are virtually no checks to establish people's identities at polling stations. Despite the new checks that are being introduced for postal voting, the committee's report states:
	"determined fraudsters can easily sidestep these by registering false identities on the electoral register."
	My hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) explained those weaknesses succinctly in his speech.
	There are thus renewed calls from the Electoral Commission for the introduction of individual registration. That has long been the position of the Conservative party, so I am pleased to note that we are supported by the Liberal Democrats, and that a Labour Member such as the hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook and Small Heath (Mr. Godsiff) accepts that it is necessary. The Electoral Commission and most electoral administrators believe that individual registration is, in principle, a more accurate means of registering eligible voters and thus the preferred way forward. The Committee on Standards in Public Life has also concluded that the new system of registration should be complemented by an additional objective verifier and that changes should be made immediately.
	I am sure that other safety measures could be reviewed, not least regarding non-canvassing near polling stations, which the hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook and Small Heath mentioned. I noted the concerns expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham. I can tell him only that we stopped using freepost in the 1990s in London after finding much of our freepost dumped in dustbins throughout the borough. My hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield also made apt comments in that regard.
	The sad fact remains that the Government have repeatedly resisted calls to implement measures that would remedy the situation. The Minister talked about instituting all-postal voting in 2001, but she failed to mention the fact that the Electoral Commission withdrew its support for such voting in 2004 because of the Government's failure to implement the necessary safeguards to increase the security of postal voting and individual registration. The hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Mr. Galloway) made a strong case against postal votes on demand. Whether or not one supports that, the need to avoid fraud is vital. We have clearly seen in Tower Hamlets a prime example of how our system has gone very badly wrong.
	The Government have consistently chosen to overlook suggestions that they consider the experiences of electoral reform in Northern Ireland. The main measures implemented through the Electoral Fraud (Northern Ireland) Act 2002 included the introduction of individual registration and the use of national insurance numbers as personal identifiers. The latter measure safeguards against illegitimate multiple registration by citizens and improper registration by non-citizens. In addition, a returning officer at a polling station can ask for any suspicious voter's personal identifiers, which can then be checked against the registration. Most critically, for the non-supervised postal votes, national insurance numbers must be submitted with the ballot papers, which combats the fraud that was evidently rife. Previously, Northern Ireland struggled with the prevalent perception that fraud was widespread. However, since the introduction of the measures in 2002, they have been judged by the electorate and the political parties to be successful in both combating fraud and decreasing the perception of fraud. Some 72 per cent. of respondents declared that they thought that the measures would reduce electoral fraud. In the combined elections in 2005, there were no reported incidents of fraudulent activity.
	The position is very different in England. Indeed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne pointed out, it is so different that we are now to be investigated by the Council of Europe—I congratulate him on his initiative in that regard. One cannot say that the situation is news to the Government. In a Westminster Hall debate on 22 June 2005, I spoke about the inadequacy of the Government's proposal to use only a signature and a date of birth as individual identifiers. On 5 July 2005, when questioned about the benefits of using national insurance numbers as personal identifiers, the Minister of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs, conceded that they were an effective method of cross-checking information to establish a person's existence.
	On Second Reading of the Government's Electoral Administration Bill, my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire warned that the measures proposed represented a "damp lettuce leaf" rather than the "strong sword" that was required to defend our democracy. Despite that, the Government have consistently pushed forward policies that ignore the grave danger of electoral fraud in favour of increasing turnout at the polls, and they are doing so again today. I once again ask how much longer will it be, and how many more debates will it take, until the Government act.
	We accept that it is important that as many eligible people as possible participate in the democratic process, but that should never be at the expense of the integrity of that process. The Minister of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs, correctly said that the legitimacy of our democracy depends on three things: everyone having the right to vote, everyone wanting to vote, and no one fiddling the vote. However, she has consistently failed to appreciate the relative significance of those issues. They do not, as she suggested, represent three equal legs of a stool. We believe that it is not a question of creating an exact balance between the security of the poll and encouraging voting, important though encouraging participation may be, as the integrity of the electoral process is at the heart of the democratic system. It is the fundamental issue; if there is no confidence in the system, fewer, not more, people will vote. That point was made strongly by my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington.
	The point that the Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, the hon. Member for Lewisham, East (Bridget Prentice), made earlier about non-registration is simply a red herring. She mentioned encouraging registration, but she will know that people are obliged to register by statute. When I asked her in a written question how many people had been prosecuted for non-registration, she answered that, so far as she knew, none had been. Why is that the case? Again, the answer is Government inaction. Will she abandon what my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington and the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow called her complacency, and say whether the Government intend to take the action recommended by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, which said that the Electoral Commission's role of increasing participation in the democratic process does not support or fit with its core regulatory task? Should we not be spending our time urgently reviewing the commission's powers to stop fraud? May we please have a clear answer from the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, the hon. Member for Inverclyde (David Cairns), in his response?
	Unbelievably, even now, the issue dominating Department for Constitutional Affairs press releases is not the need to crack down on electoral fraud but the extension of all-postal voting, and the trialling of internet and telephone voting. Earlier, the Minister called that a sensible step, but we say that if we do not have the appropriate controls, such measures would, if anything, increase the incidence of fraud. As the Foundation for Information Policy Research remarked,
	"It's always a bad idea to look for technical fixes to social problems."
	All the signs show that the Government have lost their way, and have lost all sight of the priority issue.
	Could there be a murkier reason for Labour's inaction? On 5 February 2007, in an article, Sir Alistair Graham was quoted as saying that Ministers did not adopt personal identifiers because there were fears that the Labour vote would suffer. He said:
	"It is worrying if people are taking a partisan approach to this."
	What a sad indictment of new Labour if our great democracy has come to that. The Government should wake up, as the British electoral system is in serious danger of losing its credibility. As my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne pointed out, what was once the model for democracies in civilisations across the world has sunk to being investigated alongside emerging states and toppled dictatorships. In light of the recommendations of the 11th report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, we urge the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland to admit plainly that it is time urgently to address the issues, before it is too late, and to support our motion.

David Cairns: We have had an interesting, lively and at times informed debate on an important topic. Hon. Members have drawn on wisdom accumulated from decades of experience—and that was just the hon. Member for Northampton, South (Mr. Binley)—which would compound into centuries of campaigning experience. Concern has properly been expressed about the paramount need to ensure the integrity of the electoral system and protect it from those who would seek to pervert it and distort the democratic process for profoundly undemocratic ends. Scores have been settled in this evening's debate—on both sides of the House, it must be admitted—and allegations have been aired. There have been a few disgraceful slurs, and I hope that those who made them will reflect on them.

Jim Devine: It has been alleged that the present system is advantageous for the Labour party, but I have checked whether people who come to my surgery have registered to vote. Sometimes, as many as 40 per cent. on them are not on the register. Many people who left the register when the poll tax was introduced by the Conservatives were our supporters.

David Cairns: My hon. Friend is correct that it was alleged that the current system benefits Labour, but that allegation was made in relation to the boundary changes, and seemed to suggest that the boundary commissioners were biased towards Labour, which is a disgraceful attack on the integrity and the independence of the boundary commissions. I hope that the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Horam), who made that allegation, will reflect on it.

John Horam: rose—

David Cairns: I see that he has done so. I shall accept his intervention in a second. The party that waxed lyrical about the evils of pilots and our obsession with them piloted the poll tax in our native land, and did not give two hoots about it.

John Horam: I merely pointed out the fact that there were 93 more Labour Members in England, even though the Conservatives received more votes. I am not implying that the Government arranged that—of course they did not—but they seek to add to that fact further advantage from electoral registration.

David Cairns: Why is it advantageous to the Labour party to ensure that everyone who is entitled to vote is on the register? It is advantageous to the health of our democracy for everyone who is entitled to vote to be on the register. That is not a party political point, and it is amazing that the hon. Gentleman should construe it as such. Of course the Government take allegations of fraud seriously, but we take seriously, too, the significant under-representation on the electoral register of people who are entitled to vote.
	In her opening speech, the Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, East (Bridget Prentice), set out in great detail the many steps that we have taken—most recently, in the Electoral Administration Act 2006—to counter threats to the electoral process. Many examples of fraud—and many examples were not even fraud—that were cited predate the measures introduced in that Act, and little credit was given to the fact that we have made progress in that measure. To imply that we have not done anything at all since allegations of fraud and of operations worthy of a banana republic were made is to ignore the entire Act, which is extremely unwise.

Fraser Kemp: The tenor of our debate suggested that electoral maladministration has occurred only since the increased opportunity for postal voting. I should be grateful if the Minister placed in the Library information about election courts that were convened prior to the Act. Like the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Mr. Galloway), I have worked for the Labour party for a number of years, and I can think of many examples of fraud that occurred before the Act, so the notion that it has all happened now is simply wrong.

David Cairns: From memory, I believe that 49 allegations were made in 2000, before the extension of postal voting, which proves my hon. Friend's point.  [ Interruption. ] If that figure is wrong, I will correct it, but my hon. Friend is quite right that fraud is not connected exclusively to the extension of postal voting. I shall come on to that in a second.

Chris Bryant: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, not least because I have not been able to attend the whole debate. Will he comment on a situation that has arisen in my constituency? A Labour councillor has died, and in the normal course of events it would be for the Labour group to decide when to hold the by-election. It would make perfect sense to hold it on the same day as the Assembly elections at the beginning of May, but Plaid Cymru has insisted that it be held earlier, despite the fact that the by-election on 29 March will be held under one system of postal voting and the elections, only a month later, will be held under a completely different system. Does that not show that some political parties want to sow confusion in the electors' minds?

David Cairns: That sounds a particularly bonkers state of affairs that Plaid Cymru has managed to engineer in my hon. Friend's constituency, but he affords me the opportunity to mention that new measures will come into place for local elections that specifically address some of the concerns that have been raised this evening. There will be a new way of operating postal votes and postal vote applications.
	In his opening speech, the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) revisited many of the discussions that we had at the time of the Electoral Administration Act 2006 in relation to individual voter registration and individual personal identifiers for voter registration. We had the debate at inordinate length during the passage of the Act, but we were not able to reach a consensus. There was a variety of views. The hon. Gentleman went well beyond what the Electoral Commission advocated. He wanted national insurance numbers to serve as the personal identifier. The Electoral Commission specifically ruled that out.
	The position of the Liberal Democrats was more consistent with the position of the Electoral Commission. We said that we did not oppose in principle the idea of personal identifiers or individual registration, but legitimate concern was expressed not just by those on the Labour Benches—it was echoed this evening by the Liberal Democrat Front-Bench spokesman—that any extension of that could have a detrimental effect on the numbers of people registered to vote. Hon. Members on my side were speaking of catastrophic impacts. That is why we put forward the compromise proposal that we would pilot the idea to get some evidence upon which to base a national extension of the scheme. I regret that that compromise was not accepted on all sides, so we adopted a second compromise for individual identifiers in relation to postal voting.
	That has not calmed the argument about postal voting. The hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire says that there is a problem with fraudulent registration, which he says is ridiculously easy. He argues that we need personal identifiers in relation to the register. We are bringing in personal identifiers—signature and date of birth—for postal voting, but he says that that is not enough and will not solve the problem. There is a fundamental inconsistency in the Opposition's approach.

Oliver Heald: The central allegation being made is that the Government are soft on fraud. They are ignoring the advice of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. Even where they have introduced the measure requiring signature and date of birth for postal voting, they propose that only 20 per cent. of the votes will be checked. That is nowhere near enough to tackle the problem. The Government's measure for polling stations, was so ineptly drafted that it is not being introduced at all.

David Cairns: The hon. Gentleman knows very well that 20 per cent. is a minimum figure and that in some areas far more than that, up to 100 per cent. of votes, will be checked. He cannot argue that individual identifiers—signature and date of birth—solve the problem for the register and then say that they do not come near solving the problem for postal voting. That is fundamentally inconsistent.

Simon Hughes: I hope that the Minister is about to say that in view of the clear recommendations from the Committee on Standards in Public Life to the Government, they will accept and implement them within the time scale required by the committee.

David Cairns: I intended to deal with that when I responded to the hon. Gentleman's remarks. We have only just received the report and we are still considering it. We will consider carefully the recommendations that it contains, and we will issue our response to that in due course.
	At no point in the speech from the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire did he express the slightest concern about the 3.5 million missing voters. He did not begin to recognise that there is an issue in constituencies where 80 per cent. of people who are entitled to vote are registered to vote. In some constituencies fewer than 80 per cent. are registered to vote. In my constituency the figure is 84 per cent. That is unacceptable.

Brian Binley: rose—

David Cairns: I will not give way.
	We took steps in the Act to maximise the register. We gave additional resources to returning officers. The hon. Gentleman is right that we should ensure that they are given the proper status in councils. We have given them resources and we have given them duties and the extra assistance to maximise the registers. We take that seriously, even if he does not.
	The hon. Gentleman and other Members mentioned that Council of Europe rapporteurs were in the country investigating allegations of electoral fraud. I hope they might investigate some allegations about selection votes in Conservative constituencies, where I understand that there are ongoing allegations of electoral fraud. There was a 15 to 14 vote in a meeting of 27 people. Perhaps if the rapporteurs are at a loose end, they might take a little detour to South Staffordshire, where I am sure that they would get ample evidence to inform their report.
	I wrote in my notes that the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) had taken a slightly more enlightened view on these matters than his predecessor, but the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) has now planted himself on the Front Bench. I shall say it anyway. The hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey takes a more enlightened view than his predecessor, who did not grasp sufficiently the struggle in inner-city constituencies to get people on the register, or why we thought that some of the measures that were proposed could have a detrimental effect on that. We did not say that they would have, just that they could have, which is why we proposed the compromise of piloting the suggestion. However, he joined the Tories in opposing that compromise. That was a shame, because we do not now have the evidence base that would allow us to make a decision about whether such measures would be appropriate throughout the country—

Jonathan Djanogly: Will the Minister give way?

David Cairns: No, I only have a few minutes left.
	The hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey mentioned the important idea of a democracy day, which has some merit. I understand that the Electoral Commission is considering having a big registration week in March and it is incumbent on all of us to ensure that everyone in our constituency who is entitled to be on the register is put on it.
	The hon. Gentleman made the bizarre point—I have heard Liberal Democrats make it before—that we have a lower turnout because we do not have proportional representation. Well, we have three different models for voting in Scotland—first past the post for Westminster elections, an additional member system for the Scottish Parliament and a very proportional system for the European Parliament elections. If the hon. Gentleman's thesis were correct, the highest vote would be in the European elections, the second highest in the Scottish Parliament elections and the lowest in the Westminster elections. But of course the reality is that the turnouts are the other way around. The first-past-the-post election has the most voters. The hon. Gentleman should adopt an evidence-based approach to his assertions.
	Allegations have been made—I take them seriously—that the Government do not take the Electoral Commission's report or recommendations seriously. We do. Indeed, more than 80 per cent. of the measures in the Bill that became the Electoral Administration Act 2006 came from the Electoral Commission, including some of those to do with the threshold at which parties lost their deposit. We put those measures into the Bill because the commission recommended them, but the House rejected them. So we do take the commission seriously.
	Let us be clear: it is the role of the Electoral Commission to make recommendations to the House, but it is the role of the House to make decisions on those recommendations. The House made decisions about individual registration and personal identifiers. The other place overturned those decisions, and they were brought back here, but the House made its views clear again. We have reservations about extending these matters, because we are concerned about the impact that they will have on registration levels. Unfortunately, those concerns are not shared on both sides of the House.
	We have heard hon. Members on both sides, but especially on the Conservative Benches, speaking about their great love of democracy, which brought them into politics in the first place. But the integrity of the electoral system is about more than ensuring that there is no postal voting fraud or eliminating errors in registration. Those things are necessary, but they are not sufficient to ensure a vibrant democracy. That can be delivered only by a Government who are committed to devolving power and extending democratic participation. The Opposition denied the people of Scotland and Wales their own devolved Government, left London bereft of strategic leadership in an act of supreme political spite, fought tooth and nail when Labour introduced devolution for Scotland and Wales and tried to oppose the return of a directly elected Mayor for London, so they have no credibility whatever when it comes to protecting and enhancing our nation's democracy. That is why the House will reject, and will be right to do so, the motion in the name of the Leader of the Opposition. The House will be right to support the amendment in the name of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister.

Question put, That the original words stand part of the Question:—
	 The House divided: Ayes 219, Noes 282.

Question accordingly negatived.
	 Question, That the proposed words be there added,  put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 31 (Questions on amendments):—
	 The House divided: Ayes 277, Noes 210.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	Mr. Speaker  forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.
	 Resolved,
	That this House believes that the Government has introduced a range of sensible and proportionate measures to ensure that elections are safe and secure; recognises that public confidence in the electoral process is paramount; believes that the Government is taking an appropriate and sensible approach in testing and trialling e-voting before making any decision to introduce it or not; supports the action being taken by the Government to ensure that electoral registers are comprehensive and accurate; and notes that these issues were debated during the passage of the Electoral Administration Act 2006 through Parliament.

SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES BILL  [MONEY]

Queen's recommendation having been signified—
	 Resolved,
	That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Sustainable Communities Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of—
	(a) any expenditure incurred under or by virtue of the Act by a Minister of the Crown or government department, and
	(b) any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable out of money so provided under any other Act.— [Mr. Woolas.]

DELEGATED LEGISLATION

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Delegated Legislation Committees),

Northern Ireland

That the draft District Electoral Areas Commissioner (Northern Ireland) (Amendment) Order 2006, which was laid before this House on 30th November, be approved. —[Jonathan Shaw.]
	 Question agreed to.
	 Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Delegated Legislation Committees),

Social Security

That the draft Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers' Compensation) (Payment of Claims) (Amendment) Regulations 2007, which were laid before this House on 22nd January, be approved. —[Jonathan Shaw.]
	 Question agreed to.

EUROPEAN UNION DOCUMENTS

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 119(9) (European Standing Committees),

European Enforcement Order and the Transfer of Sentenced Prisoners

That this House takes notes of European Union Document No. 13080/06, Draft Council Framework Decision on the application of the principle of mutual recognition to judgments in criminal matters imposing custodial sentences or measures involving deprivation of liberty for the purpose of their enforcement in the European Union; and supports the Government's intention to secure adoption of this agreement. —[Jonathan Shaw.]
	 Question agreed to.

COMMITTEES

Ordered,
	That Grant Shapps be discharged from the Public Administration Committee and Mr Charles Walker be added. ——[Rosemary McKenna, on behalf of the Committee of Selection].

PETITION

Kettering Tax Office

Philip Hollobone: I have the honour to present a petition signed by almost 400 residents from Kettering and across north Northamptonshire, objecting to the proposed closure of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs tax office in Kettering.
	The petition states:
	To the House of Commons
	The Petition of Karen Slough and other employees of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, Kettering, sheweth
	That Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs tax office in Kettering provides an important service to the local community, but that its future is threatened by the reorganisation of tax offices in Northamptonshire. Staff who work at the Kettering tax offices have provided loyal and dedicated service to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs over many years with a significant number of staff having served for a long period of time.
	Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your Honourable House calls upon Her Majesty's Government to make an early announcement that the tax offices at Kettering will be retained so that the local community will continue to be served by a tax office based in Kettering.
	And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray, etc.
	 To lie upon the Table.

FLOODING (SOUTH-WEST NORFOLK)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. —[Jonathan Shaw.]

Christopher Fraser: I am grateful for the opportunity to raise the issue of fen flooding in South-West Norfolk, which is of great concern to many of my constituents, especially those living close to the Ouse washes. I pay tribute to the community representatives and local residents who have worked so hard to find a solution to the problem, particularly borough councillors David Pope and Vivienne Spikings, and Welney parish council chairman Ken Goodger and his council colleagues.
	No community has been more deeply affected by the flooding than the residents of the village of Welney. Once again this winter, the inhabitants of this rural community have found themselves isolated by flooding up to 3 ft deep across the A1101, which traffic surveys show is used by more than 2,000 vehicles each day in the dry season. For more than 80 days since last November the road has been impassable. The flood waters receded at the end of January, but the respite was short-lived and, once again, the road is under water.
	The duration of the flooding is not unprecedented, but it has been significantly worse in the past seven years compared with a decade ago. According to the Environment Agency, between 1990 and 1997, the road was flooded for a total of 100 days; in the past seven years, it has been impassable for almost 300 days. This season, it seems probable that the road will be flooded for more than 100 days. There is an escalating trend—an extremely worrying one that reflects the problem of climate change that we all face. With global warming likely to increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather and winter rainfall, it seems inevitable that unless the Government step in, residents of Welney will be cut off for even longer periods, and probably face an increasingly dangerous situation.
	The result of flooding is that, for increasingly long periods, local businesses are denied passing trade. They also lose custom from those living on the other side of the Welney wash, because residents face diversions of 20 miles in each direction. That is a massive inconvenience for them and for others trying to use ever more congested alternative routes through the county. The loss of trade is keenly felt by local businesses, such as shops, pubs and, importantly, rural post offices.
	What assessment have the Government made of the economic impact of the annual flood on South-West Norfolk and, in particular, the Norfolk fens? What assistance is available to those who are suffering? If no help is forthcoming, it is inevitable that those businesses will close or relocate, leaving yet another rural community with no amenities. I should also like to the ask the Minister, given the increase in housing planned for the area and Norfolk generally, what guarantee the Government can give that plans will take account of the fact that a significant detour is inevitable when the A1101 is impassable. Will that be borne in mind when infrastructure projects such as new schools, hospitals and other services are planned?
	In the past, steps were taken to increase the flow of water along the Bedford and Hundred Foot rivers. The construction of Welmore sluice was intended to increase the outflow by 50 per cent. and residents were assured that the built-in water jets would prevent silt from reducing its operational effectiveness, but I am told that the sluice gates across the wash, particularly those in the north such as the Denver sluice, will soon be sealed shut by silt. Welmore sluice is little better. The problem is now so severe that a former flood defence manager has told me that there will be problems getting boats into the locks from the middle level. Will the Minister confirm whether that is true? What steps are being taken to clear the channels?
	The catchment flood management plan issued by the Environment Agency highlights the fact that the Great Ouse is
	"very sensitive to sediment problems",
	and notes that those tend to
	"accumulate in or around in-channel structures such as bridges, culverts and outfalls, reducing the ability to function properly, and thus increasing the risk of flooding as the river channel's ability to hold and convey water is reduced".
	It continues:
	"The tidal Great Ouse River, particularly from the Wash to Earith shows significant sediment accumulation...regular maintenance to clear accumulated sediment is required."
	Yet the Environment Agency's approach to the river is inconsistent. Fallen trees, urban debris and an abundance of reeds are, in addition to the sediment, causing severe blockages in some main river channels. This regularly leads to local flooding and can significantly heighten the likelihood of a major flood incident. As the Minister will know, all landowners are required to pay a general drainage charge to the Environment Agency, and in return, it maintains some stretches on their behalf. However, in other areas, it insists that the responsibility fall to the landowners themselves. There seems no rhyme or reason why some areas receive preferential treatment. However, the Environment Agency is clear on one point. It states emphatically that dredging is inappropriate because
	"significant silting of the river may reoccur during or within a short time of completing any dredging".
	To my constituents, such an argument seems absurd. If the level of silt deposits is so great, that surely strengthens, rather than weakens, the argument in favour of regular dredging.
	During the period before the Environment Agency's assuming responsibility for the river, a dredging programme was in place. At one stage, some 15 to 18 drag lines were in constant operation. Since the agency took charge, these operations have ceased. Surely it cannot be a coincidence that since that time, the severity of flooding in the Welney wash has, as I said earlier, increased enormously. If silt is preventing one part of the system from working properly, does that not place excessive strain on other sections?
	I emphasise that we in South-West Norfolk are not looking to blight other communities downstream. What we are calling on the Government to do is to recognise that the bottleneck at Welney is just a few miles short of the sea, and we want them to find ways of moving the floodwater those few miles extra to the coast.
	Perhaps the most difficult aspect of this debate is that although a great deal of money has been spent protecting areas along the River Ouse in Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire from flooding, no money is being spent on protecting much of the section in Norfolk. Why do the Government find it acceptable to take steps to alleviate the problem of flooding in Bedfordshire, but abandon the people of Welney to cope with the consequences? To them, it seems inevitable that the bottleneck around Welmore, aggravated by the huge silt deposits, could dramatically increase the severity of any future floods. Local people also think that it increases the likelihood of a breach in the tidal floodbank, the consequence of which could be catastrophic.
	The question is: how can the Government appear to put a higher value on the lives of people further upstream than on those further downstream in my constituency, in terms of money going into flood alleviation projects? Once again, the people of Norfolk find themselves at the wrong end of the Government's priority list.  [Interruption.] I note that the Minister is laughing at that comment, but for the people who live with this problem daily, it is no laughing matter. Residents and parish and district councillors are gravely concerned that if the current trend continues, lives will be lost and homes made uninhabitable. The lack of adequate flood warning has on several occasions endangered livestock, as well. Given the speed with which the waters rise, if no action is taken it will be only a matter of time before a tragedy occurs. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that the local flood embankments and the tidal floodbank can cope with the predicted future increases in floodwater levels? What assessment has been made of the need for an early warning system?
	The Environment Agency claims that dredging would have significant environmental consequences. Surely significant environmental damage will occur if no action is taken?
	The wetlands have deteriorated drastically over the past three decades, owing to excessive flooding because the Environment Agency has failed to maintain the rivers. That poses a grave threat to plant and animal species in Welney wash. Having destroyed the existing area through the neglect I have just mentioned, the Government propose spending £15 million to create new wetland. Is not that another short-term and short-sighted fix that ignores the greater long-term problem? The proposal starkly demonstrates the fact that the Government are simply turning their back on the problem. Will they search for a new site each time the old one becomes unviable?
	The draft management plan states:
	"The nature conservation value cannot be allowed to decline any further."
	Clearly doing nothing is not an option, nor is simply abandoning the current wetland. Instead of spending the money on new wetland, the Government would, without doubt, achieve more by spending it on addressing the problems in the current wetland area. More than a decade ago, it was assessed that the cost of dredging a new central channel along the most severely affected eight miles of the tidal river would be approximately £300,000 and that the work would take eight days. That would have enabled the river to flow more freely and assisted the natural process of clearing the remaining silt, so I urge the Government to reconsider that option.
	The issue of paramount concern to my constituents in Welney is the state of the A1101. In recent years local roads such as the A141 and A10 have been upgraded. Work has even been carried out on the bridges at either end of the wash road, yet the A1101 has remained almost untouched. The residents and the parish council would like the road access across the wash raised so that it is passable. I hope there is an engineering solution that can overcome the subsoil problems, but if not, what other solution can the Government offer local residents? What assessment have the Government made of the cost of such modifications?
	The alternative would be to build an entirely new road with culverts, which would be difficult and more expensive given the protected nature of much of the area, but of course if the Government were able to support such a scheme local people would welcome it. In either case, neither Norfolk county council nor the East of England regional assembly is in a position to foot the bill, nor should they have to do so. Our armed forces do a magnificent job swiftly laying floating roadways across rivers in war zones and areas of conflict and disaster, so why is that solution entirely beyond the Government's capabilities on home soil when there are problems such as those in the fens?
	My constituents feel excluded and frustrated by the apparent lack of interest in their predicament. They feel desperately let down by the Government and are extremely frightened for the future. The current consultation is a case in point. It took my office two weeks, three phone calls and two e-mails to track down a copy of the draft catchment flood management plan, which, unlike those for other rivers, is not on the Environment Agency website. I was sent the wrong document, told that the most recent document relating to the Great Ouse was published in 2005, and then sent a summary with no indication of how to obtain the full document. That does not seem to be the comprehensive public consultation that such an important issue warrants. I should be grateful if the Minister could ensure that the document is, at the very least, made available online.
	There have been sustained problems of neglect, buck-passing and lack of leadership on the issue. To date, the Government's policy has been entirely passive. A strong proactive approach is desperately needed. The Government designated the Ouse washes a statutory flood storage reservoir, and in doing so condemned the people of Welney to annual flooding. The Government therefore have an obligation to offer a solution to the local community.
	I have chosen to raise the issue in the House of Commons because the Government are ultimately responsible. I sincerely hope that the Minister will not simply pass the buck to the Environment Agency, as has happened so many times before, although not by this Minister but when things were devolved to other organisations. I remind him, even though he probably does not need reminding, that the agency was appointed by the Government and is accountable to him and to the Government.
	It would also be unacceptable if the buck were passed to the local authority as an issue of local priority, as other issues, such as the road infrastructure, have been in Norfolk. Government legislation is the single cause of the problem and they are responsible for providing a solution for local people.

Ian Pearson: I congratulate the hon. Member for South-West Norfolk (Mr. Fraser) on securing this debate and want to assure him that, as a Government, we take flooding extremely seriously. Flooding is a traumatic experience that is costly in material terms and in disruption to people's lives, and also psychologically in terms of stress and worry.
	In recent years, we have made a great deal of progress in improving our management of flood risk and in understanding and taking into account the possible future impacts of climate change. We estimate that between 4 million and 5 million people live in areas at risk of flooding, with assets totalling some £250 billion, and the probability of flooding is likely to increase as a result of climate change and sea level rises.
	The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has overall policy responsibility for flood risk management in England. We work in close partnership with the Environment Agency, which is the principal operating authority for managing these risks. Measures to manage the risk include the building and maintenance of defences to reduce the probability of flooding, but go beyond this to embrace a range of approaches for reducing the consequences of flooding when it does occur. These include public awareness campaigns, flood warning and emergency planning, together with seeking to avoid increasing risk through inappropriate development.
	We are currently engaged in the most thorough review of flood risk management policy for many years in the cross-government "Making Space for Water" programme. Among other things, we are considering responses received to our public consultation on extending the Environment Agency's role in terms of a strategic overview of coastal flood and erosion risk. We are funding a number of projects looking at developing ideas for novel ways to improve the management of flood risk, including 15 pilot projects to help identify improvements in the area of integrated urban drainage. We are also aiming to encourage better resilience and resistance for buildings and emergency infrastructure.
	We have increased funding significantly in recent years, and DEFRA will provide £436 million to the Environment Agency for flood risk management in 2007-08. Notwithstanding the increased funding since 1997, there will always be the need to prioritise which proposals should receive funding first, and the operating authorities, principally the Environment Agency, work with communities to find solutions to flooding problems, which are then prioritised through an objective system to make sure that the country gets maximum benefit from our investment. It is clear that we could spend the agency's budget many times over and it is important that we have a rigorous system of assessing what the overall priorities are and what the best benefits will be from the investment that we make as taxpayers.
	To turn to the specific problem highlighted by the hon. Gentleman, I recognise the inconvenience that is clearly caused to residents of Welney and others by closure of the A1101 by floodwater. It might help if I briefly expand on the context. The Ouse washes, across which the Welney road—the A1101—passes and where the flooding occurs, is an area specifically set aside for storage of flood waters. It covers an area of about 2,000 hectares between the banks of two watercourses and was constructed by the Dutch engineer, Sir Cornelius Vermuyden, in the 1600s to drain the fens.
	The area is a statutory flood storage reservoir under the Reservoirs Act 1975. It is designed to reduce the risk of large-scale flooding of the fens and it is still needed for that purpose. It stores flood water that would otherwise cause overtopping of river banks and flooding elsewhere. The area receives water from rivers and tributaries that pass through Buckingham, Milton Keynes, Newport Pagnell, Bedford, St. Neots and Huntingdon. The washes transfer flood waters from Earith in the south to Welmore lake in the north, where the waters are discharged through Welmore sluice into the Great Ouse tidal river to flow out to sea.
	I understand that flooding of the A1101 depends mainly on the volume of water entering the Ouse washes at the Earith sluice. Following heavy rainfall, large volumes of water have to pass from Earith over the washes, including the road, to get to the outfall into the tidal river at Welmore sluice. The Environment Agency operates the Earith sluice within parameters that are designed to keep the sluice operating optimally to avoid flooding elsewhere and that cannot be overridden except in exceptional circumstances.
	I should emphasise that the flood storage area is working as it was designed to work—that is, transferring large volumes of water that would otherwise flood homes and land out to sea. As the hon. Gentleman recognised, the impact of climate change in the future is likely to increase those peak volumes, as winters become wetter and storminess increases. There is no practical way to stop the flow of water across the Ouse washes. It is my understanding that the only practicable way to reduce the risk of the road flooding would be to elevate the road. That was one of the solutions that he suggested. I understand that the cost of doing that would be between £6 million and £7 million, based on 2003 estimates, which would have to be updated. This is clearly a matter for the local highways authorities in the first instance.
	The hon. Gentleman raised the issue of the sluice operation. The Welmore sluice, which assists the draining of the washes, was reconstructed for improved operation in 1999 at a cost of some £5 million. With three sets of large gates, it is 50 per cent. larger than the old sluice. It allows a one-way transfer of water through gravity discharge from the Ouse washes into the tidal river when the river is low enough to allow that, while preventing water from flowing in the opposite direction back into the washes when the river is high.
	The problem of the silting up of the sluice itself is managed by water jets to clear any build-up, which is then further washed away by the flow of water through the sluice. There are two drainage pumps at Welmore and provision for additional temporary pumps. These evacuate lower levels of flood water off the washes in the spring when gravity discharge is no longer effective. They are not designed to evacuate large volumes of winter flood water off the washes. Welmore lake sluice is currently fully operational. It is able effectively to discharge flood water from the washes down to a level below that of the Welney road—the A1101. That is, when the inflow of water at Earith ceases, Welmore sluice will effectively clear the road of flood water.
	The Environment Agency does not believe that the flooding of Welney road is directly related to the height of the tidal river caused by the level of silt. The ability of the Welmore sluice to discharge water is dependent on the low tide level in the tidal river. In the sense that silt raises the height of the river, it does reduce the discharge efficiency of the sluice. However, the fact remains that the water still has to cross the road to get from Earith to Welmore. As things are now, Welmore is currently able to clear the road once water has ceased to enter at Earith. So, the solution to the problem works at the moment and we do not believe that clearing the silt will have a significant or major impact.
	Most of the silt deposited in the river comes from the tide as it comes in and out twice a day. The fact that the outgoing tide is slower than the inward tide causes silt to be deposited in the channel. The extent to which that happens is dependent upon natural river flows. Silt is currently raising the level of the river bed, as a result of low water flows out to sea caused by two very dry winters and summers. The bed levels are higher than those experienced in 1996-97, which followed another prolonged drought period. However, by contrast, after the wet winters between 1998 and 2003, river bed levels reduced by over a metre, which demonstrates the natural silt-clearing effect of sustained winter flows.

Christopher Fraser: rose—

Ian Pearson: I will come on to the questions that the hon. Gentleman asked.
	I understand that the proposal to de-silt to adequate levels would cost in the region of £4 million to £5 million and would take a number of years to complete. As the Environment Agency has stated—the hon. Gentleman noted this in his speech—significant silting of the river could recur in a short time, perhaps even while the dredging operation was being carried out. The option thus does not seem to be sustainable. However, as a result of the build-up of silt between Denver and Salters Lode, in an attempt to improve navigation—I stress the word "navigation"—the Environment Agency plans to plough part of the river in the next few weeks, which involves disturbing the silt on the river bed to assist its transport back out to sea. The agency will monitor that work to determine how effective it is and whether it might have some applicability to improving the outflow from the Ouse washes.
	The Environment Agency recognises that silt in the tidal river is a long-term issue that might be worsened by the impact of climate change. That is why it is undertaking a study to develop a tidal river strategy, which will consider options for managing silt in the tidal river over the next 50 years. The study should report in late 2008.
	The hon. Gentleman talked about the amount spent on increasing flood defences in Norfolk compared with other counties, such as Bedfordshire. In the past five years, the Environment Agency has spent in excess of £12 million on improving flood defences in Norfolk alone. That was significantly more than the amount spent in Bedfordshire in the same period. The annual spend on the tidal river for the stretch about which we are talking is in the region of £200,000, which is for asset and structural maintenance work and pumping costs.
	The Environment Agency has not undertaken a specific assessment of the cost of the Ouse washes flooding. However, the hon. Gentleman will probably be aware that a 2003 report for Norfolk county council on the viability of improving the A1101 concluded:
	"The actual cost of disruption is not possible to quantify because of the various and diverse nature of traffic using the road and the wide spread of alternative route options".
	The hon. Gentleman asked what assistance the Government could offer to those affected. The Environment Agency is not considering offering additional assistance to those affected by the closure of the road, other than by giving advance notice of a closure and reopening the road as soon as possible. Warnings that the road is flooding are given as soon as is practicable and whenever water starts to encroach on the road. The general view is that it would be difficult to provide earlier notice because the situation is dependent on rainfall, flow rates, catchment conditions, the discharge capability of the tidal river and tidal influence.
	I agree with the hon. Gentleman about new housing development. It is the view of the Environment Agency that road flooding would need to be considered as part of the planning process. Additional development in the area might affect the economic viability of improvements to the road and the washes, so that would be a factor to be taken into consideration.
	The hon. Gentleman talked about climate change. Climate change and weather pattern changes are part of the ongoing tidal river strategy review. Until that review has been completed, we cannot really provide information about any change to the frequency and duration of flooding of the Ouse washes and, hence, the A1101. However, such work is being actively pursued through the tidal study.
	I understand that the hon. Gentleman is meeting the Environment Agency later this week. I am sure that it will be pleased to discuss the problem in more detail. I thank him for bringing the matter to the attention of the House. He has rightly raised this important issue on behalf of his constituents and I wish him all the best in pursuing it with the Environment Agency.
	 The motion having been made after Ten o'clock, and the debate having continued for half an hour, Madam Deputy Speaker  adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
	 Adjourned at Eleven o'clock.